Courses by semester
Courses for Spring 2023
Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .
| Course ID | Title | Offered |
|---|---|---|
| PHIL1100 | Introduction to Philosophy A general introduction to some of the main topics, texts, and methods of philosophy. Topics may include the existence of God, the nature of mind and its relation to the body, causation, free will, knowledge and skepticism, and justice and moral obligation. Readings may be drawn from the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophical literature. | Fall, Spring, Summer. |
| PHIL1110 | FWS: Philosophy in Practice This First-Year Writing Seminar is about using philosophy and everyday life and provides the opportunity to write extensively about these issues. Topics vary by section. | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL1111 | FWS: Philosophical Problems This First-Year Writing Seminar discusses problems in philosophy and gives the opportunity to write about them. Topics vary by section. | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL1112 |
FWS: Philosophical Conversations
This First-Year Writing Seminar offers the opportunity to discuss and write about philosophy. Topics vary by section.
Full details for PHIL 1112 - FWS: Philosophical Conversations |
Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL1450 | Contemporary Moral Issues An introduction to some of the main contemporary moral issues. Topics may, for example, include animal rights, abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, sexual morality, genetic engineering, and questions of welfare and social justice. | Summer. |
| PHIL1620 |
Introduction to Cognitive Science
This course provides an introduction to the science of the mind. Everyone knows what it's like to think and perceive, but this subjective experience provides little insight into how minds emerge from physical entities like brains. To address this issue, cognitive science integrates work from at least five disciplines: Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy. This course introduces students to the insights these disciplines offer into the workings of the mind by exploring visual perception, attention, memory, learning, problem solving, language, and consciousness.
Full details for PHIL 1620 - Introduction to Cognitive Science |
Spring, Summer. |
| PHIL1621 |
WIM: Introduction to Cognitive Science
This section is highly recommended for students who are interested in learning about the topics covered in the main course through writing and discussion.
Full details for PHIL 1621 - WIM: Introduction to Cognitive Science |
Spring. |
| PHIL1650 | Philosophy of Race This course offers an introduction to the philosophy of race. It canvasses key debates in the field concerning the metaphysical status of race, the relationship between the concept of race and racism (and the nature of the latter), the first-person reality of race, and the connections and disconnections between racial, ethnic, and national identities. | Spring. |
| PHIL1920 |
Introduction to Political Theory
This course introduces students to political theory as a distinctive mode of political inquiry. By surveying the wide range of forms through which political theory has been practiced—such as treatises, dialogues, plays, aphorisms, novels, manifestos, letters, speeches, illustrations, and films—we explore the ways in which political theory reflects upon, criticizes, and reshapes the basic concepts, habits of perception, and modes of feeling through which people make sense of the political world, from big events like wars and revolutions to everyday experiences of felt injustice or alienation. Our approach will be both historical and conceptual, attending to the force of each theoretical intervention in its context, while also drawing out the broader philosophical and political questions it continues to pose to us now.
Full details for PHIL 1920 - Introduction to Political Theory |
Spring. |
| PHIL2220 | Modern Philosophy A survey of Western philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries: Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. We focus largely on epistemology (ideas, skepticism, belief, knowledge, science) and metaphysics (bodies, minds, God, causation, natural laws, afterlife, and personal identity). Some of the ethical implications of these systems will also be mentioned in passing. | Spring. |
| PHIL2310 |
Introduction to Deductive Logic
Covers sentential languages, the truth-functional connectives, and their logic; first-order languages, the quantifiers "every" and "some," and their logic.
Full details for PHIL 2310 - Introduction to Deductive Logic |
Fall, spring. |
| PHIL2410 | Ethics This will be a lecture course on classic and contemporary work on central topics in ethics. The first third of the course will focus on metaethics: we will examine the meaning of moral claims and ask whether there is any sense in which moral principles are objectively valid. The second third of the course will focus on normative ethics: what makes our lives worth living, what makes our actions right or wrong, and what do we owe to others? The final third of the course will focus on moral character: what is moral praiseworthiness, and how important is it? Can we be held responsible for what we do? When and why? | Spring. |
| PHIL2430 | Moral Dilemmas in the Law The course concerns the principles and philosophical arguments underlying conflicts and moral dilemmas of central and ongoing concern to society as they arise within legal contexts. We consider questions such as what justifies using state power to punish people for wrongdoing, what kinds of conduct are rightly criminalized, what justifies the Supreme Court's power to strike down Congressional legislation, what justifies the right to private property and its boundaries, what is the right to privacy and why it is important, what are human rights, and what is the morality and law of war. Throughout we will be reading legal cases and philosophical commentaries that engage with the deep issues that the cases pose. | Fall. |
| PHIL2610 | Knowledge and Reality An introduction to some central philosophical questions about knowledge and reality. Questions to be addressed may include: What, if anything, do we know? What is it for a belief to be reasonable? What is it for one event to cause another event? What makes the person reading the beginning of this sentence the same as the person reading the end of this sentence? Readings are typically drawn from recent sources. | Fall. |
| PHIL2621 | Minds and Machines Throughout history, metaphors drawn from technology of the time have been proposed to understand how the mind works. While Locke likened the newborn's mind to a blank slate, Freud compared the mind to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. More recently, many have endorsed Turing's proposal that the mind is a computer. Why is this idea attractive and what exactly is a computer? Is it at all plausible that the cells of your brain are computing? Could a computer ever really have a mind, beliefs, emotions and conscious experiences? What are these mysterious things anyway? Could a machine ever count as a person and make choices based on its own free will? Is it really so clear that we have this kind of free will? | Spring. |
| PHIL2810 |
Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
We will look at some central questions about the nature of scientific theory and practice. What makes a discipline a science? Does science discover the objective truth about the world? How, and why, do scientific theories change over time? To what extent do observation and experiment determine which theories we accept? What is a good scientific explanation? What are laws of nature? Does physics have a special status compared to other sciences?
Full details for PHIL 2810 - Introduction to the Philosophy of Science |
Fall. |
| PHIL2960 | Ethics and the Environment Politicians, scientists, and citizens worldwide face many environmental issues today, but they are neither simple nor straightforward. Moreover, there are many ways to understand how we have, do, and could value the environment from animal rights and wise use to deep ecology and ecofeminism. This class acquaints students with some of the challenging moral issues that arise in the context of environmental management and policy-making, both in the past and the present. Environmental concerns also highlight important economic, epistemological, legal, political, and social issues in assessing our moral obligations to nature as well as other humans. This course examines various perspectives expressed in both contemporary and historical debates over environmental ethics by exploring four central questions: What is nature? Who counts in environmental ethics? How do we know nature? Whose nature? | Spring. |
| PHIL2990 | Foundations of Law and Society This course explores the meaning of Law and Society, which is an interdisciplinary study of the interactive nature of legal and social forces. A law and society perspective places law in its historical, social, and cultural context, studying the dynamic way in which law shapes social norms, policy, and institutions, and conversely, the way that social forces shape the law. This Foundations of Law and Society course is structured as a series of four modules, each taught by a faculty member from a different discipline. The modules will introduce students to a range of disciplinary methods and content related to the study of the interaction of law with social, political, and economic institutions and relationships. | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL3202 | Plato We will study several of Plato's major dialogues, including the Apology, the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic. Topics include knowledge and reality, morality and happiness, and the nature of the soul. | Spring. |
| PHIL3230 | Kant An intensive study of the metaphysical and epistemological doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason. Some editions of the course may also consider Kant's ethical views as laid out in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and related works. | Spring. |
| PHIL3300 | Introduction to Set Theory This will be a course on standard set theory (first developed by Ernst Zermelo early in the 20th century): the basic concepts of sethood and membership, operations on sets, functions as sets, the set-theoretic construction of the Natural Numbers, the Integers, the Rational and Real numbers; time permitting, some discussion of cardinality. | Spring. |
| PHIL3310 | Deductive Logic A mathematical study of the formal languages of standard first-order propositional and predicate logic, including their syntax, semantics, and deductive systems. The basic apparatus of model theory will be presented. Various formal results will be established, most importantly soundness and completeness. | Spring. |
| PHIL3340 | Modal Logic Modal logic is a general logical framework for systematizing reasoning about qualified and relativized truth. It has been used to study the logic of possibility, time, knowledge, obligation, provability, and much more. This course will explore both the theoretical foundations and the various philosophical applications of modal logic. On the theoretical side, we will cover basic metatheory, including Kripke semantics, soundness and completeness, correspondence theory, and expressive power. On the applied side, we will examine temporal logic, epistemic logic, deontic logic, counterfactuals, two-dimensional logics, and quantified modal logic. | Spring. |
| PHIL3475 | Philosophy of Punishment This course addresses central debates in the philosophy of legal punishment. We will analyze the leading theories of punishment, including the familiar retributivist and deterrent alternatives, as well as lesser-known hybrid, self-defense, and rehabilitative accounts. We will ask whether each theory offers a general justification for establishing institutions of punishment, and whether each theory justifies specific acts of punishment. Other topics may include criminal responsibility, the legitimacy of collateral consequences (e.g., the denial of felons' voting rights), alternatives to punishment, etc. | Spring. |
| PHIL3480 | Philosophy of Law This will be a class on various topics in the philosophy of law. Some questions we'll be considering: What is law? Do laws have moral content? What is the proper role of judges in interpreting the law? What do alternatives to our legal system look like? Is there an obligation to obey the law? Might there sometimes be an obligation to disobey the law? What, if anything, justifies punishment by the state? What counts has having an excuse for wrongdoing? What counts as good evidence of guilt? What are the justifications for and limits of the right to free speech? When, if ever, is paternalistic interference by the state into the lives of its citizens justified? And what special ethical problems do practicing lawyers face? | Spring. |
| PHIL3525 |
Africana Philosophy: Existentialism in Black
The dominant strains in Euro-American philosophy tend either to erase or underplay the participation in and contributions to the constitution of "Western" philosophy of philosophers from the global African world. Additionally, dominant philosophical narratives are notorious for excluding African-inflected discourses from explorations of the perennial problems of philosophy. In this class, we seek to fill this absence by spending time studying the contributions to a distinct philosophical tradition—Existentialism—by thinkers from the global African world.
Full details for PHIL 3525 - Africana Philosophy: Existentialism in Black |
Spring. |
| PHIL3900 | Independent Study To be taken only in exceptional circumstances. Must be arranged by the student with his or her advisor and the faculty member who has agreed to direct the study. | Fall or Spring. |
| PHIL3915 | Moral Psychology in Action Moral Psychology in Action is an applied psychology course for students who want to make a difference in the world through ethical leadership and positive contributions in organizations, and who are drawn to scholarly work on psychology, ethics, and morality. | Spring. |
| PHIL4002 | Latin Philosophical Texts Reading and translation of Latin philosophical texts. | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL4110 | Greek Philosophical Texts Reading and translation of Greek philosophical texts. | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL4200 | Topics in Ancient Philosophy Advanced discussion of topics in ancient philosophy. | Spring. |
| PHIL4210 | Augustine Topics for this course vary. | Spring. |
| PHIL4490 | Feminism and Philosophy Feminist approaches to questions in metaphysics, epistemology, language, and value theory. | Spring. |
| PHIL4510 |
Topics in the Philosophy of Aesthetics
An investigation of central topics in the philosophy of art, with an emphasis on issues about the mind. Readings will be drawn from philosophy and psychology.
Full details for PHIL 4510 - Topics in the Philosophy of Aesthetics |
Spring. |
| PHIL4570 | Chinese Philosophy This course surveys major schools of classical Chinese philosophy: Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism. We focus on the Confucian vision of an ideal life, moral development, and self-cultivation, whereby one refines and reshapes one's emotions to achieve ethical excellence and contribute to one's community. We explore the Mohist advocacy of an ethics in which everyone is to be treated impartially, and the differences between Mohism and Confucianism in relation to key ethical issues. We emphasize the Daoist rejection of Confucian moral preaching and the idea that the "truth" can be captured through theorizing and argument, as well as the espousal in this tradition of "non-action" and intuitive action. We shall see how advocates of these different philosophies debated and borrowed ideas from each other. | Spring. |
| PHIL4640 | Topics in Metaphysics Advanced discussion of a topic in metaphysics. | Spring. |
| PHIL4710 |
Topics in the Philosophy of Language
An investigation of varying topics in the philosophy of language including reference, meaning, the relationship between language and thought, communication, modality, logic and pragmatics.
Full details for PHIL 4710 - Topics in the Philosophy of Language |
Spring. |
| PHIL4720 | Pragmatics What is the relationship between what words mean and how they are used? What is part of the grammar and what is a result of general reasoning? Pragmatics is often thought of as the study of how meaning depends on the context of utterance. However, it can be difficult to draw a line between pragmatics and semantics. In this course, we will investigate various topics that walk this line, including varieties of linguistic inference (including entailment, presupposition, and implicature), anaphora, indexicals, and speech acts. | Spring. |
| PHIL4900 | Informal Study for Honors I Majors in philosophy may choose to pursue honors in their senior year. Students undertake research leading to the writing of an honors essay by the end of the final semester. Prospective candidates should apply at the Department of Philosophy office, 218 Goldwin Smith Hall. | Multi-semester course: (Fall, Spring). |
| PHIL4901 | Informal Study for Honors II Majors in philosophy may choose to pursue honors in their senior year. Students undertake research leading to the writing of an honors essay by the end of the final semester. Prospective candidates should apply at the Department of Philosophy office, 218 Goldwin Smith Hall. | Spring. |
| PHIL6010 | Greek Philosophical Texts Reading and translation of Greek Philosophical texts. | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL6020 | Latin Philosophical Texts Reading and translation of Latin philosophical texts. | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL6200 | Topics in Ancient Philosophy Advanced discussion of topics in ancient philosophy. | Spring. |
| PHIL6202 | Plato | |
| PHIL6210 | Topics in Medieval Philosophy Graduate seminar covering a topic in medieval philosophy. | Spring. |
| PHIL6220 | Topics in Modern Philosophy Advanced discussion of topics or authors in "modern" Western philosophy (circa the 17th and 18th centuries). | Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL6310 | Deductive Logic A mathematical study of the formal languages of standard first-order propositional and predicate logic, including their syntax, semantics, and deductive systems. The basic apparatus of model theory will be presented. Various formal results will be established, most importantly soundness and completeness. | Spring. |
| PHIL6311 |
Topics in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics
Advanced discussion of a topic in logic or foundational mathematics.
Full details for PHIL 6311 - Topics in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics |
Fall. |
| PHIL6410 |
Seminar in Ethics and Value Theory
Graduate seminar covering a topic in ethics and value theory.
Full details for PHIL 6410 - Seminar in Ethics and Value Theory |
Fall, Spring. |
| PHIL6430 |
Topics in Social and Political Philosophy
Advanced discussion of a topic in social and political philosophy.
Full details for PHIL 6430 - Topics in Social and Political Philosophy |
Spring. |
| PHIL6475 | Philosophy of Punishment This course addresses central debates in the philosophy of legal punishment. We will analyze the leading theories of punishment, including the familiar retributivist and deterrent alternatives, as well as lesser-known hybrid, self-defense, and rehabilitative accounts. We will ask whether each theory offers a general justification for establishing institutions of punishment, and whether each theory justifies specific acts of punishment. Other topics may include criminal responsibility, the legitimacy of collateral consequences (e.g., the denial of felons' voting rights), alternatives to punishment, etc. | Spring. |
| PHIL6490 | Feminism and Philosophy Feminist approaches to questions in metaphysics, epistemology, language, and value theory. | Spring. |
| PHIL6510 |
Topics in the Philosophy of Aesthetics
An investigation of central topics in the philosophy of art, with an emphasis on issues about the mind. Readings will be drawn from philosophy and psychology.
Full details for PHIL 6510 - Topics in the Philosophy of Aesthetics |
Spring. |
| PHIL6570 | Chinese Philosophy This course surveys major schools of classical Chinese philosophy: Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism. We focus on the Confucian vision of an ideal life, moral development, and self-cultivation, whereby one refines and reshapes one's emotions to achieve ethical excellence and contribute to one's community. We explore the Mohist advocacy of an ethics in which everyone is to be treated impartially, and the differences between Mohism and Confucianism in relation to key ethical issues. We emphasize the Daoist rejection of Confucian moral preaching and the idea that the "truth" can be captured through theorizing and argument, as well as the espousal in this tradition of "non-action" and intuitive action. We shall see how advocates of these different philosophies debated and borrowed ideas from each other. | Spring. |
| PHIL6640 | Topics in Metaphysics Graduate seminar covering a topic in Metaphysics. | Spring. |
| PHIL6710 |
Topics in the Philosophy of Language
An investigation of varying topics in the philosophy of language including reference, meaning, the relationship between language and thought, communication, modality, logic and pragmatics.
Full details for PHIL 6710 - Topics in the Philosophy of Language |
Spring. |
| PHIL6720 | Pragmatics What is the relationship between what words mean and how they are used? What is part of the grammar and what is a result of general reasoning? Pragmatics is often thought of as the study of how meaning depends on the context of utterance. However, it can be difficult to draw a line between pragmatics and semantics. In this course, we will investigate various topics that walk this line, including varieties of linguistic inference including entailment, presupposition, and implicature), anaphora, indexicals, and speech acts. | Spring. |
| PHIL6731 | Semantics II Uses the techniques introduced in Semantics I to analyze linguistic phenomena, including quantifier scope, ellipsis, and referential pronouns. Temporal and possible worlds semantics are introduced and used in the analysis of modality, tense, and belief sentences. The phenomena of presupposition, indefinite descriptions, and anaphora are analyzed in a dynamic compositional framework that formalizes the idea that sentence meaning effects a change in an information state. | Spring. |
| PHIL6740 | Semantics Seminar Addresses current theoretical and empirical issues in semantics. | Fall. |
| PHIL6951 |
Aesthetic Theory: The End of Art
This course investigates the emergence of aesthetics as its own philosophical discipline at the end of the eighteenth century. In a first phase, we will examine the rationalist articulation of aesthetics in Baumgarten's work and the empiricist theory of taste, particularly Burke's Enquiry. Drawing on the findings of these two traditions, Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790) inaugurated a preoccupation in German philosophy around 1800 with the philosophical status of the beautiful and of art. Especially in Romantic theory and practice, art was meant to provide a solution to the philosophical dilemmas in the wake of Kant's critical philosophy. However, already in Hegel's Phenomenology, and more explicitly in the Encyclopedia and the Lectures on Aesthetics, art lost this elevated position vis-à-vis philosophy. Taking this observation as a guiding thread, the main part of the course is structured around in-depth readings that may include Kant, Schiller, Schelling, the Schlegels, Novalis, Hölderlin, and Hegel. Further readings may include writings by contemporary philosophers and theoreticians--such as Adorno, Allison, Danto, Deleuze, Derrida, Ginsborg, Guyer, Lyotard et al.--whose work on aesthetics takes its starting point from the philosophical issues surrounding the emergence of aesthetic theory only to transcend these historical confines and formulate contemporary positions on the status of the aesthetic and of art. The following questions will be addressed: What are the conditions for the move from the subjective judgment of taste (Kant) to objective beauty (Romantics, Hegel)? How is the relation of art and nature reconceived by the Romantics? What is the relation of aesthetic theory and the history of art? Is philosophy the end of art?
Full details for PHIL 6951 - Aesthetic Theory: The End of Art |
Spring. |
| PHIL7000 | Informal Study Independent study for graduate students only. | Fall or Spring. |