Undergrad Courses

No course description available.

The goal of this course is to offer an introduction to ancient Greek philosophy. We will start by examining the kind of philosophical questions in which the first Greek philosophers, the so-called Presocratics, were interested. These were primarily questions about natural philosophy, and especially about the first causes of the world and the place of human beings in it. The Presocratics will provide us with the background we need to explore the complex figure of Socrates and his analysis of what a good life consists in. What should we care for in order to live well, Socrates wondered, money, political power, or something else? He argued that, to live well, we should care for our soul. But what is a soul, and what does it mean to care for it? To answer these questions, we will examine Plato’s psychology and metaphysics and Aristotle’s criticism of them. Despite their differences, both Plato and Aristotle thought that, to have a good life, a human being had to be virtuous, but should we conclude from this that virtue is all one needs to be happy? We will end the course by considering two different answers to this question: that of the Epicureans, who thought that a flourishing life was a life of pleasure and viewed virtue only as a means to achieve pleasure, and that of the Stoics, who thought, in contrast, that virtue was all one needed to be happy.

No course description available.

No course description available.

 

Our social and culture identities—our racial, ethnic, religious, and gender identities, among others—play a central role in our lives, providing us with ideas about who we are and how we should be. As such, they raise a range of ethical and political questions. In this course, we will take up a variety of these questions, with a particular focus on questions that arise in the context of a diverse society, in which we are faced with practical dilemmas about how to live together with people from a broad range of backgrounds, the degree to which we should accommodate and respect the identities of others, and how we should balance our own (sometimes conflicting) social identities.

This course is divided into several sections. In the first few weeks, we will consider questions about the nature of social and cultural identities, and the possibility of speak across such identities. Then, we will consider issues related to ownership of cultures, particularly the notions of cultural property and cultural appropriation. After that, we will examine debates about cultural preservation and assimilation, with a particular focus on a debate within Africana philosophy about the ‘conservation’ of the races. In the second half of the class, we will turn to the more squarely political issue of multiculturalism. Here, we will read a range of perspectives on the compatibility of multiculturalism and modern liberal values, and then conclude with a debate about the apparent tensions between political solidarity and multiculturalism.

All readings for this course will be either posted on canvas or available through the University of Pittsburgh Libraries website.

No course description available.

This is an introductory course considering ethical questions that arise in the context of medical care. The course has three parts.

 

In Part I, we will examine some of the most prominent approaches to ethical theory in philosophy. These will provide us with big-picture frameworks within which we can think about the more specific principles and claims relevant to issues in biomedical ethics.

 

In Part II, we will begin to apply these frameworks to particular issues in biomedical ethics. Part II focuses on issues that arise in an interpersonal medical context—between patients and their family members, and between patients and medical professionals. We will consider euthanasia, advance directives, family involvement in patient decision-making, and medical expertise. While learning about these topics, we will be introduced to key ethical concepts such as consent, relational autonomy, and epistemic injustice.

 

Part III will zoom out from the interpersonal context and address broader questions about healthcare allocation and health policy. We will start by considering the role of the state in providing healthcare, and whether there is a right to healthcare. Suppose there is such a right. Who should provide it? Can the state obligate certain individuals to become doctors or nurses? And can it obligate them to stay and work in certain areas or countries? These are questions of productive justice. We will address such questions in both a national and global context. We will also consider organ trade and the ethical limits of markets in healthcare allocation, and, finally, the ethics of pandemic policy.

What did philosophers of the past, women and men, have to say about women’s nature, moral character, education, and the roles they should play in society? How did these philosophers argue for their views? In this course we will consider women as both subject matter for, and participants in, a number of debates in the history of western philosophy from ancient Greece through the 19th century. Our reading will include selections from works by Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Musonius Rufus, Christine de Pizan, Anna Maria van Schurman, Sor Juana de la Cruz, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Mary Astell, Francois Poulain de la Barre, Dorotha Christiane Erxleben, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and Harriet Taylor.

No course description available.

An introductory course in the theory of knowledge. What does it mean to know something? And what do we know? We will take these questions as starting point to think about reasoning, evidence and science. We will also ask whether modern technology raises new skeptical problems.

 

At times, we are creative, intelligent, depressed, happy, homesick, free, or angry. These are not primarily states our bodies are in, but states that our minds are in. The guiding question of this course will be the following: are these states “real”, e.g. real mental states, or even reducible to bodily states? Or, are these states mere social constructions, states that we brought into existence by social agreement? Or, are they something else, real yet socially constructed? This question is especially pressing for mental disorders.

The course will discuss this question both abstractly and as applied to specific mental states. In the first part of this course we cover important philosophical discussions about the mind and its states, in order to gain the philosophical toolkit to apply our knowledge to states and disorders of contemporary concern. We will encounter Plato’s idea that the soul is divided into different parts, and then consider philosophical arguments on two important mental capacities: do we have a mental capacity of free will and creativity? In both cases, we will consider arguments for and against, but also the history of the respective concepts. 

In the second part of this course we turn to mental disorders. We will begin by clarifying what these are, and whether they should count as diseases or rather states that aren’t neurotypical. We then turn to case-studies, in which we apply our philosophical skills to ask the guiding question: are multiple- personality disorder, depression, autism, etc. real, or are these social constructions, or something third? Given how important this question is to contemporary society, students are encouraged to bring insights from their life and from social media (TikTok, Instagram, etc.) into class. 

This course will examine the chief arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as other topics central to philosophy of religion: the nature of religious experiences, the relation of faith to reason, the personal and cultural usefulness of religion & religious practices, and religious responses to evil (theodicy). Students will develop a working knowledge of the issues by reading and discussing traditional and contemporary scholars.

This course will examine the chief arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as other topics central to philosophy of religion: the nature of religious experiences, the relation of faith to reason, the personal and cultural usefulness of religion & religious practices, and religious responses to evil (theodicy). Students will develop a working knowledge of the issues by reading and discussing traditional and contemporary scholars.

What follows from what? This question is the topic of logic, one of the main branches of philosophy going back to antiquity. Logic has transformed the foundations of mathematics, birthed computer science, and informed many research programs in analytic philosophy.

This is a first course in logic for students with no background in the subject. We will learn how to formalize natural language arguments and assess their correctness. In particular, we will develop a notion of formal proof which will let us show, using precise rules of inference, when the conclusion of an argument follows from its premises. There are no prerequisites other than a willingness to reason mathematically.

In this course, we will read a selection of Plato’s dialogues that will allow us to become familiar with all the ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical problems Plato dealt with in his early and mid-career. The dialogues will not be among those that are often read in the survey course on ancient philosophy, except for some excerpts from the Republic. We will begin with the Euthyphro, and we will then move on to Crito, Meno, Symposium, Phaedo, and excerpts from Books 4 and 5 of the Republic. Through the Euthyphro, we will explore the problem of what makes something pious and, more generally valuable, by considering whether this is some intrinsic feature of a thing or rather one bestowed upon it by someone or something. In the Crito we will encounter the problem of determining how we ought to behave when our personal interest is in apparent conflict with that of our political community. The Meno will introduce us to Plato’s early epistemology based on the so-called theory of recollection. Finally, the Symposium and the Phaedo will allow us to both refine our understanding of Plato’s epistemology in light of his appeal to Forms, and to become familiar with his early career psychology. As we will see, in the Republic, Plato will introduce some important changes to both his epistemology and his psychology.

No course description available.

The primary aim of this course is to reach a general understanding of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. To this end, we shall examine the Critique’s central logical and metaphysical doctrines, with attention to their historical context. Following Kant as he seeks to determine whether a science of metaphysics is possible, we shall consider the fundamental question he poses (“How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?”), the way of thinking he follows in answering it (the so-called “Copernican Revolution”), and the doctrine of Transcendental Idealism on which his answer to this question depends. A second aim of the course is to gain familiarity with Kant’s contribution to moral philosophy. The final weeks will accordingly be devoted to his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, in which he undertakes an analysis of common moral knowledge with a view to reaching a formulation of its supreme principle.

Prerequisite: Phil 0210 History of Modern Philosophy OR Phil 1110 Rationalism OR Phil 1140 Empiricism.

This course will examine the later philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. It will center on a close reading of parts of his influential Philosophical Investigations, though we will draw on some of his other later writings and secondary sources insofar as they help make sense of that core text. The goal will be to gain an appreciation for Wittgenstein’s idiosyncratic approaches to philosophical questions about language and mind and to make some first steps in trying to bring his views into contact with contemporary thinking about these subjects. Some prior exposure to philosophy of language or mind is helpful, but not a prerequisite.

No course description available.

No course description available.

The points of departure for this course are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, both adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.  We will examine how these commitments relate to John Locke’s foundational defense of the rights to life, liberty, and private property.  Extensive consideration will be given to the right to life and its coordination with liberty rights and private property rights.  After studying Locke’s theoretical framework, we will examine how failures to observe the rights of human individuals ought to be compensated.  Though Locke does not consider the claim that some groups have a right to existence beyond the human rights held by the individuals, the Convention on Genocide seeks to enforce that claim.  The course finishes with an examination of the apparent limitations of rights theory with regard to climate change.

No course description available.

An upper-division course in the theory of knowledge. Not a general survey of the field, but an investigation of fundamental epistemological issues raised by skeptical arguments.

In ordinary life, we take ourselves to know many things. I know that I'm sitting at my desk right now, writing these words. However, on reflection, it is not so clear whether we can know anything. How can I rule out the possibility that I might be dreaming right now, or perhaps I'm a brain in a vat? We will use such skeptical arguments as starting point to think about knowledge, reasoning and evidence. What do we mean when we say that we know something? How can we gain knowledge by observing the world? We end by looking at skeptical problems raised by modern technology.

Do our proof systems for first order logic allow us to prove all and only the first order validities? How is it that we can prove facts about infinitely many infinite mathematical structures? When must a mathematical structure exist? What can we learn about a mathematical structure via properties of the formal language it interprets? To address these questions, we will develop the syntax and semantics of first order logic, study definable sets, and prove fundamental results like Gödel's Completeness Theorem, Compactness, the Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem, and the Omitting Types Theorem. Time permitting, we will see Morley's Categoricity Theorem and rudiments of classification theory.

No course description available.

This course will examine the chief arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as other topics central to philosophy of religion: the nature of religious experiences, the relation of faith to reason, the personal and cultural usefulness of religion & religious practices, and religious responses to evil (theodicy). Students will develop a working knowledge of the issues by reading and discussing traditional and contemporary scholars.

 

The focus of this seminar is the nature of the good. What does it mean to say that the good is the ultimate object of desire? What is the good? What is it for something to be good? We discuss distinctions in value, ways that things can be valuable (instrumentally, intrinsically, finally), different evaluative concepts (excellence, benefit, moral goodness, happiness), as well as some more substantive questions about ‘well-being’. We will spend some time thinking about Plato's form of the Good. We will also be thinking about causation and the good. We read selections from Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. We read contemporary classics by Peter Geach, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Joseph Raz, Philippa Foot, T. M. Scanlon, Christine Korsgaard, G. E. Moore, and others.