Not available at this time

Graduate level seminar in a specific topic in Normative Ethics. See UMass Philosophy Department's homepage (Graduate Courses tab) for further information about the topic of this course.

Critical survey of basic issues concerning knowledge. Representative questions include What is knowledge? Can knowledge be purely a priori? Is there a defensible distinction between the analytic and the synthetic? What is the nature of empirical evidence? Is it possible to justify inductive inference? How can we confirm beliefs about unobservable entities?

Not available at this time

The goal of this course to develop a piece of philosophical writing from an initial draft into a polished piece of philosophical work. The instructor and student must agree on the paper to work on at the beginning of the practicum, which in many cases will be a past term paper written for another course which the student has received good feedback on, but still requires improvement. The student and faculty member will meet to discuss drafts of the paper and ways to improve it, including doing additional research, refining the philosophical argumentation, and improving the writing.

Not available at this time

See Department Website for Description.

We investigate one of the following topics in depth. The computational model, the problem of naturalizing intentionality, internalism vs. externalism, the problem of naturalizing conscious experience, the relation between perception and cognition.