Fall 2026 Upper Level Courses
Below you will find our upper-division course offerings for the Fall 2026 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.
Philosophical analysis of legal theory and the relation of law to other basic social institutions.
| LMSA | Saturday | 9:05am-12:00pm | Sherif Moussa | In Person |
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.
| CTRA | Tuesday & Thursday | 10:45am-12:00pm | Amy Trautwein | In Person |
This course is a philosophical examination of fundamental psychological concepts such as belief, desire, motive, and intention; and an analysis of psychological explanations, the nature of feelings and emotions, and the relation of folk psychology to the science of psychology. Theories and concepts, such as the unconscious, from the psychoanalytic or Freudian tradition will also be considered. This is the same course as PHI 3035. Students may receive credits for PSY 3035 or PHI 3035, not both.
| FTRA | Tuesday & Thursday | 4:10pm-5:25pm | Elliot Schwartz | In Person |
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.
| PMWA | Monday & Wednesday | 5:50pm-7:05pm | Anatoly Nichvoloda | In Person |
Language, a distinctive and remarkable human endowment, is philosophically fascinating. This course addresses such questions as how meanings get expressed in language, how our linguistic abilities work, and how we come to acquire such abilities.Students will be introduced to foundational topics in the philosophy of language and become acquainted with the works of significant theorists such as Frege, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Grice, and Chomsky. Students will also engage with contemporary issues in linguistic theory, including the semantic/pragmatics border, the theoretical implications of large language models like ChatGPT, and the social impact of essentialist language.
| DMWA | Monday & Wednesday | 12:50pm-2:05pm | David Neely | In Person |
A study of the thought of the Greek philosophers, especially Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
| CMWA | Monday & Wednesday | 10:45am-12:00pm | Doug Lackey | In Person |
A study of the major modern philosophers, including Descartes,Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.
| CWA | Wednesday | 10:45am-12:00pm | Thomas Teufel | Hybrid Asynchronous |
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.
| QMWA | Monday & Wednesday | 7:30pm-8:45pm | Ben Hoffman | In Person |
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.)
| QTRA | Tuesday & Thursday | 7:30pm-8:45pm | Ross Colebrook | Online |
A study of the nature of science and the scientific methods. Examples will be taken from both the physical and the social sciences.
| DMWA | Monday & Wednesday | 12:50pm-2:05pm | Doug Lackey | In Person |
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.
| CTRA | Tuesday & Thursday | 10:45am-12:00pm | Sandeep Sreekumar | In Person |
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.)
| ETRA | Tuesday & Thursday | 2:30pm-3:45pm | Elizabeth Edenberg | In Person |
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PHI Core Curriculum (‘Pathways’) Courses
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New Concentration Areas: i) World Philosophical Traditions and ii) Ethics & the Public Life
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Recent Capstone Seminar Topics
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