Courses

Courses for Spring 2019 

Undergraduate

  • PHIL 1. Short Introduction to Philosophy
    • An introductory course in western philosophy.
  • PHIL 3. Critical Thinking
    • Practical reasoning, argumentation, and the analysis of language as instruments of sound thinking in everyday life.
  • PHIL 4. Introduction to Ethics
    • An examination, at an introductory level, of such ethical issues as: why be moral, moral relativism, the nature of virtues and vices; and possibly consideration of practical ethical problems such as abortion or war.
  • PHIL 20C. History of Philosophy
    • From the Empiricists to Kant.
  • PHIL 100A. Ethics
    • An examination of the fundamental concepts, theories, and problems of moral or political philosophy.
  • PHIL 100B. Theory of Knowledge
    • Investigates fundamental questions surrounding the nature of human knowledge and human justification, such as: What do I know? What am I justified in believing? What is it to know something? What is it to hold a justified belief?
  • PHIL 124. Philosophy of Science
    • Analysis of the interrelated functions of scientific theories, models, laws, experiments, and observational procedures in relation to the goals of explanation, prediction, control, and understanding. Problems of induction and the logic of confirmation.
  • PHIL 133. History of Political Thought
    • A study of one or more important figures from the history of political thought.
  • PHIL 134. Moral Psychology
    • An examination of the nature of desires, emotions, the imagination and other aspects of human psychology, and of the ways these bear on the moral evaluation of people and actions.
  • PHIL 141. History of Ethics
    • A study of one or more historically important moral philosophers.
  • PHIL 143. Philosophy of Law
    • An introduction to some of the main issues generated by the philosophical question, "What is law?" In what sense is conduct made obligatory by the existence of law? What, if any, is the relationship between law and morals? What are rules? What does it mean to say that a rule exists? Do courts really apply rules or merely pretend to do so?
  • PHIL 149. Action Theory
    • An examination of philosophical topics connected with human action, e.g. the role of intentions and desires in the explanation and justification of action and the nature of practical reason.
  • PHIL 150E. Advanced Topics in Metaphysics
    • Advanced topics in metaphysics. Specific subject matter is selected by the instructor and descriptions are available in the department before each quarter.
  • PHIL 164. Berkeley
    • The philosophy of Berkeley.
  • PHIL 176. Historical Philosophers
    • Examination of historical philosophers beyond those covered in Philosophy 106 and 151-166.
  • PHIL 183. Beginning Modern Logic
    • An introduction to the concepts and methods of modern symbolic logic. Emphasis is placed on problems of translating English expressions into logical symbols and on the development of skills in using the formal proof procedures of sentential and predicate logic.
  • PHIL 184. Intermediate Modern Logic
    • Further application and development of the predicate calculus, including the calculi of identity and description. An introduction to the metalogical questions of completeness, consistency, and decidability.