Sarah Paul

An introduction to the discipline of philosophy by way of several central philosophical problems. Topics may include free will, the nature of the self, skepticism and the possibility of knowledge, the ethics of punishment, the existence of God, the requirements of justice, the relation between our minds and our bodies, the nature of moral principles, and various logical paradoxes.

Is there a point or significance to life as a whole? That is the question about the "meaning of life." Though this question is notoriously hard to make precise, in one form or another it has animated much literature and art, and also much philosophy. Some philosophers have provided disheartening answers: life is suffering, and then it ends; life is absurd and never gains any meaning. But other philosophers have provided more uplifting answers that support the quest for personal significance. Bot h kinds of answers deserve scrutiny. After reviewing various pessimistic and more optimistic approaches to the meaning of life, we will turn to the subject of death. We will all die eventually. We normally encounter the death of our family and friend s before we must deal with our own. These themes too are the subject of philosophical reflection. We finish the semester with a discussion of the connection between individual significance and the future of humanity. This class will integrate references to art and literature as well as to science where appropriate, but its main focus is on contributions by recent thinkers in the analytical tradition of philosophy.

This course aims to provide you with a set of analytical tools distinctive of philosophy that will help you to think systematically and critically about issues of legal relevance. We will begin by exploring foundational issues concerning the nature of the law and its authority over us. We will then examine whether and how particular patterns of assigning legal responsibility and imposing legal punishment are justified, with an emphasis on the criminal law.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and rational belief. In this course we will examine various central epistemological questions, including: What is knowledge, and how does it differ from belief? Can we ever know that the world actually is the way it appears to us, or must we concede to the skeptic that we do not really know anything? Does knowledge always have to be based on secure foundations? If you know something, will you always know that you know it? Will you always be able to prove that you know it? What sort of attitude is belief, and what sort of control do we have over what we believe? What is evidence, and what is the connection between knowledge and evidence? Do we have any good reasons to believe some things rather than others? Is it ever rational to believe in the absence of evidence? What should we do when our epistemic peers disagree with us?

Prerequisite: one Introductory Elective in Philosophy (PHIL-UH 1101-1120)

Human beings, and perhaps other kinds of creatures, are agents. We are not merely a locus of events in the world; sometimes, we make things happen. Many kinds of objects can have causal consequences, as when a rock rolls down a hill and hits a tree, and many different kinds of organisms are capable of self-movement, as when a dog blinks its eyes. But agents like us bring about effects in the world intentionally: we can hit a tree with a rock on purpose, and wink as well as blink. The concern of this course is to think about what it means to be this kind of rational, autonomous agent: what capacities must a creature have and exercise in order to be an agent determining itself to perform an intentional action? In Wittgenstein's vivid image, we want to know "what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?"

Prerequisite: one Introductory Elective in Philosophy (PHIL-UH 1101-1120)

An advanced seminar that involves the careful study of some particular theory, philosopher, or set of issues in contemporary practical philosophy. Examples: consequentialism, empirical moral psychology, the philosophy of law, the ethics of gender, Rawls, metaethics.

Prerequisite: one History of Philosophy, Theoretical Philosophy, or Practical Philosophy Elective (PHIL-UH 2210-2799)