The Republic of Plato is one of the classic gateway texts into the study and practice of philosophy, and it is just the sort of book that has been able to arrest and redirect lives. How it has been able to do this, and whether or not it will be able to do this in your own case, is something you can only discover for yourself. The present guidebook aims to help a person get fairly deep, fairly quickly, into the project. It divides the dialogue into 96 sections and provides commentary on each section as well as questions for reflection and exploration. It is organized with a table of contents and is stitched together with a system of navigating bookmarks. Links to external sites such as the Perseus Classical Library are used throughout. This book is suitable for college courses or independent study.

Welcome to Interdisciplinary Health Care Ethics (PHIL 2203ID). Here you will find a sample syllabus with links to course readings.

This course introduces students to issues in the field of biomedical ethics, the theoretical tools bioethicists use to analyze them, and methodology for resolving clinical ethical dilemmas.

forall x is an introduction to sentential logic and first-order predicate logic with identity, logical systems that significantly influenced twentieth-century analytic philosophy. After working through the material in this book, a student should be able to understand most quantified expressions that arise in their philosophical reading.

This books treats symbolization, formal semantics, and proof theory for each language. The discussion of formal semantics is more direct than in many introductory texts. Although forall x does not contain proofs of soundness and completeness, it lays the groundwork for understanding why these are things that need to be proven.

This course studies what is language and what does knowledge of a language consist of. It asks how do children learn languages and is language unique to humans; why are there many languages; how do languages change; is any language or dialect superior to another; and how are speech and writing related. Context for these and similar questions is provided by basic examination of internal organization of sentences, words, and sound systems. No prior training in linguistics is assumed.

This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. The goal of the textbook is to provide the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments. The book is intended for an introductory course that covers both formal and informal logic. As such, it is not a formal logic textbook, but is closer to what one would find marketed as a critical thinking textbook. Downloadable as a pdf file.

This course introduces the student to the basic subject matter, questions, and assumptions of study common to Philosophy and the Humanities. Through a preliminary inquiry into how writers, historians, and philosophers represent an idea, such as the construction of knowledge, students will become familiar with how the humanities employ questions of form, effect, affect, and value. This course includes Experiential Learning Opportunities (ELO) with the goal of a more transformational and engaged learning experience.

An introduction to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, as well as to the critical explanatory function of philosophy. Philosophy is the oldest, most basic and most general discipline. Introduction to Philosophy covers the central topics in philosophy in an introductory way and also is an introduction to the history of philosophy. By examining what historical philosophers said about the central issues of philosophy, the course will cover both these issues and their history in philosophy. Students will learn to read philosophy critically, as well as discovering how different philosophers have contributed to the great conversation of humankind. The impact of philosophy on our lives will be discussed in the hope that the students will be able to articulate their own ideas.

The world is a curious place. As children, we wonder about it. To questions like: “Why is the sky blue?” and “How do microwaves work?” we get initially satisfactory answers. To questions like “Why should I do what my parents tell me to do?” and “How do you know for sure there aren’t aliens on Mars?”, we get less satisfactory answers. Questions, and their possible answers, are the currency of philosophy, and (as you will see) permeate every aspect of human life. This class will interrogate our philosophically imbued experiences of the world by exploring questions like: How can we distinguish what is real from what is not real? How is knowledge shaped or constrained by one’s location? Why is truth important? What is morally important and why? Is it time for the revolution? Where is the self located? Are there different ‘kinds’ of people? In what sense do race(s) and gender(s) exist? You will leave this class with an understanding of some philosophical issues found in three main branches of Western philosophy: epistemology, value theory, and metaphysics.

Content-Based Objectives

Acquire an understanding of philosophical issues found in the study of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.
Learn about central arguments and positions on said problems.

Skill-Based Objectives

Critically examine arguments (test consistency among claims, test limits, or test capacity to address a relevant issue or problem).
Practice active listening, including the skill of charitable interpretation.
Identify arguments, including premises and conclusions.
Interrogate the weaknesses of one’s own view and the strengths of alternative views.
Formulate original arguments and foresee strong objections.
Identify and explain how philosophical concepts inform discussions of real-world issues.
Cultivate critical writing and communication skills.
Develop a philosophical curiosity that will serve you outside of the classroom.

The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, my goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. I cover traditional theories of right action in the third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. The end of the ethics sequence addresses social justice, what it is for one’s community to be good. Our sphere of concern expands progressively through these chapters. Our inquiry recapitulates the course of development into moral maturity

This course explores the nature of meaning and truth, and their bearing on the use of language in communication. No knowledge of logic or linguistics is presupposed.

This course is intended as an introduction to political philosophy as seen through an examination of some of the major texts and thinkers of the Western political tradition. Three broad themes that are central to understanding political life are focused upon: the polis experience (Plato, Aristotle), the sovereign state (Machiavelli, Hobbes), constitutional government (Locke), and democracy (Rousseau, Tocqueville). The way in which different political philosophies have given expression to various forms of political institutions and our ways of life are examined throughout the course.

Political thought, otherwise known as political theory or philosophy, is the study of questions concerning power, justice, rights, law, and other issues pertaining to governance. This course examines major texts in the history of political thought and asks how different views on human nature inform the design of government. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: summarize the passage of political thought through the classical, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods and based on the works of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and Marx; compare and contrast the differences between Plato and Aristotle with regard to their understandings of the nature of the person, ethics, society, citizenship, and governance; explain the historical and intellectual context in which the political thought that helped to develop the modern state came to be; compare and contrast the concepts of justice, freedom, equality, citizenship, and sovereignty in the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; explain the different versions of, and importance of, 'the state of nature' to political thought; identify the influences of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau on the development of the United States Constitution; summarize the thoughts of Alexis de Tocqueville on the American political landscape, particularly with regard to religion and equality, and why this has importance beyond the American context; explain Karl Marx's world view, with particular regard to his critique of democracy and the modern, politically liberal, state; how it came to be; and its fundamental link to capitalism. (Political Science 201)

Students will gain a basic understanding of the broad discipline of philosophy. Students will develop their ability to write and verbally communicate their ideas; in general, they will be able to formulate an argument in support of or in opposition to a claim, and specifically, they will be able to formulate an argument in relation to key philosophical questions with regard to the issues examined in the course.

In the decades following the Second World War, a cluster of extraordinary French thinkers were widely translated and read in American universities. Their works were soon labeled as "French Theory." Why would sharing the same nationality make authors such as Lacan, Cixous, Derrida, Foucault or Debord, ambassadors of a specifically "French" theory? The course will explore the maze of transatlantic intellectual debates since 1945 and the heyday of French existentialism. We will study the debates on communism, decolonization, neo_liberalism, gender, youth culture and mass media. This course is taught in English.

This course explores the ideal of social justice. What makes a society just? We will approach this question by studying three opposing theories of justice - utilitarianism, libertarianism, and egalitarian liberalism - each foundational to contemporary political thought and discourse.

24.901 is designed to give you a preliminary understanding of how the sound systems of different languages are structured, how and why they may differ from each other. The course also aims to provide you with analytical tools in phonology, enough to allow you to sketch the analysis of an entire phonological system by the end of the term. On a non-linguistic level, the course aims to teach you by example the virtues of formulating precise and explicit descriptive statements; and to develop your skills in making and evaluating arguments.