Below you will find our upper-division course offerings for the Fall 2025 semester. You may take any of these courses after having completed any 1000 level course in philosophy–namely:
PHI 1100 – Ethics and Critical Thinking
PHI 1500- Major Issues in Philosophy
PHI 1600- Logic and Moral Reasoning
PHI 1700- Global Ethics
Information about the Major and Minor can be found at the links to the right.
Courses marked with “**” count toward fulfilling the history requirement of the Major
Philosophical analysis of legal theory and the relation of law to other basic social institutions.
Philosophical theories about reality, substance, causality, space, time, knowledge, thought, universals, and the mind body relation. This course is cross-listed as PSY 3030. Students will receive credit for either PHI 3030 or PSY 3030, not both. These courses may not substitute for each other in the F grade replacement policy.
Though a science, economics generates intense political, moral, and philosophical controversies. This course studies philosophical and moral questions raised by economic theories, including different accounts of rational choice, the major analyses of the concept of value, the relation between justice and market distributions, the concept of rights and the notion of property, and the moral claims of consumers, shareholders, and workers.
A study of the thought of the Greek philosophers, especially Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
A study of the major modern philosophers, including Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.
This course provides a systematic introduction to Chinese philosophy and its classical schools, including Confucianism, Moism, Daoism, and Legalism. These schools will be studied by considering their responses to central philosophical problems, as well as by their responses to each other and their larger historical context. Their central teachings will, moreover, be analyzed in light of modern philosophical theories, in particular normative ethical theories. (This course is cross-listed as AAS 3170 and HIS 3170. Students may receive credit for PHI 3170, AAS 3170, or HIS 3170. These courses may not substitute for each other in the F-grade replacement policy.)
This course provides a systematic introduction to Japanese philosophy and its classical traditions, including the native tradition of Shinto and the nativized traditions of Confucianism and Buddhism. These traditions will be studied by analyzing their perspectives on the central problems of philosophy and by evaluating their responses to each other and to their larger historical context.
Experimental philosophy is a movement that supplements philosophical thinking with the methods of cognitive science, using systematic experiments to uncover how people ordinarily think about a range of issues in traditional philosophy. The aim is to better understand the status and scope of philosophical claims. Topics include moral responsibility, free will, fairness and justice, consciousness, and personal identity. (This course is crosslisted with PSY 3220. Students will receive credit for PHI 3220 or PSY 3220. These courses may substitute for each other in the F-replacement policy.)
A study of the nature of science and the scientific methods. Examples will be taken from both the physical and the social sciences.
This course focuses on the nature, justification, and conceptual analysis of crime, social responsibility, criminal responsibility and punishment; Topics may include theories of punishment, justification for limiting freedom, victimless crimes, morals offenses, guilt, insanity pleas, plea bargains, due process, white collar and cyber-crime, capital punishment.
We use digital technology in nearly all of our daily routines: work, school, relaxation, networking, navigation, etc. This dominance raises important ethical concerns regarding privacy, security, knowledge acquisition, democracy, criminal justice, social equality, intellectual property, personhood, and more. What’s more, our legal systems and social norms seem unable to keep pace with technological advances. This course will survey various ethical issues that arise in the fascinating but often troubling digital landscape. It will draw on both philosophical texts and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of technology, law, ethics, and public policy. (This course is cross-listed with CIS 3270. Students will receive credit for either PHI 3270 or CIS 3270. These courses may substitute for each other with the F-replacement policy.)
This course explores the ethical, social, and political implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and evaluates its impact on our lives. After a brief introduction to AI and Machine Learning, the course studies a variety of questions concerning the fairness, bias, manipulation, and accountability of a number of types of AI, including generative AI, deep fakes, and facial recognition technology. Students will learn to identify and evaluate key themes and ethical challenges that cut across these various contexts and technologies as well as the strategies that researchers and policymakers have proposed for addressing them.
