Ideas about the aims, guiding concepts, and practice of education are broad and constantly evolve due to human experiences in educational contexts. This introduction to the philosophy of education addresses questions including: What are the overall goals of education? What are the social, cultural, moral, and political influences on education? Can the process of education be liberatory? The course explores these questions with special attention to ethical, epistemological, existential, and decolonial philosophical perspectives.

An examination of the works of some major moral theorists of the Western philosophical tradition and their implications for understanding the nature of the good life and the sources and scope of moral responsibilities. Enrollment limited to 30.

Among the most important and philosophically intriguing results in 20th-century logic are the limitative theorems such as Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Tarski’s demonstration of the indefinability of truth in certain languages. A wide variety of approaches to resolving fundamental mathematical and semantical paradoxes have emerged in the wake of these results, as well as a variety of alternative logics including paraconsistent logics in which contradictions are tolerated.

Intensive practice in writing and discussing philosophy and in applying philosophical methods to key problems raised in essays written by members of the philosophy department. The spring semester course must be taken by the end of the student's sophomore year unless the department grants a deferral or the student declares the major itself during the spring of their sophomore year. Minors are encouraged but not required to take the class. Prerequisite: Two college courses in philosophy, one of which may be taken concurrently, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 20.

What is thinking? What is the distinction between mind and body, and ought one accept it? Can the mind survive the death of the body? Can people be thoughtful and passionate at the same time? What kind of access can one have to the worlds of human beings from other cultures and historical periods? Readings from ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophers primarily in the Western tradition. Designed to introduce beginning students to problems and methods in philosophy and to the philosophy department at Smith. Enrollment limited to 30.

In this class students learn two approaches for conducting neuroscience experiments in human subjects. Students first learn about ethical considerations for working in human subjects. Students then learn to collect and analyze neural data from human subjects performing behavioral tasks using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. In the second portion of the class students learn tools for processing and analyzing publicly available fMRI data. This class provides two opportunities to complete projects utilizing the tools learned to answer questions of student interest.

This course explores the biological foundations of addiction and the neuropharmacology of drugs of abuse. Topics include the principles of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, synaptic transmission, and mechanisms of drug action. During this course, students gain comprehensive knowledge of major drug classes, including opioids, stimulants, nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, and hallucinogens. The course also addresses major theories of addiction and situates them within their historical context.

This is an interactive lab class giving students hands-on experience working with techniques used in the study of cellular neuroscience. Techniques include: sterile cell culture, transfection (overexpression and siRNA), immunocytochemistry, cellular signaling assays and a variety of cellular functional assays. Major physiological mechanisms that underlie cellular signaling mechanisms are explored through the discussion of recent scientific literature with an emphasis on innovative techniques and strategies which allow researchers to test hypotheses and advance new concepts.