Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is one of the few works in the Western philosophic tradition that fundamentally transformed our understanding of the place of human beings in the world. This seminar involves a careful, critical reading of the text in order to assess the nature and significance of the epistemological and metaphysical views it expounds. There will be frequent, short papers.

The purpose of this course is to explore philosophical problems concerning the arts and aesthetic experience. Some questions to be explored include: What is the difference between beauty and moral goodness? Can artistic taste be objective? What does it mean for a work of music to be 'sad'? Are the intentions of artists relevant to appreciation? What is the purpose of art criticism? How do pictures represent their objects? Readings will be drawn from both historical and contemporary philosophical writings.

This course will introduce students to the basic moral principles, reasoning, and arguments operative in a variety of areas within Healthcare Ethics. In order to do this the course will be organized thusly. First, we will consider the nature of moral reasoning as it takes place within Healthcare Ethics. This includes an examination of the moral principles, theories, and considerations that factor into our moral reasoning. Following this, the rest of the course applies this reasoning and these principles to the major topics and issues in Healthcare Ethics.

This course focuses upon three central areas of political philosophy: Foundational Concepts; The Government, the Economy, and Morality; and Applied Political Philosophy. Within these areas we will consider issues such as: obedience to authority, rights, justice, freedom, equality, as well as more applied and pressing issues such as immigration rights.

This course develops a symbolic system that can be used as the basis for inference in all fields. It will provide syntax and semantics for the language of this system and investigate its adequacy. It provides the basis for all further work in logic or in the philosophical foundations of mathematics. Much of the course has a mathematical flavor, but no knowledge of mathematics is necessary.

In this course we will look at theories of causation, probability, and their interaction. We will look first at Hume on causation, and then move on to some very basic probability theory. We will briefly explore the standard statistical approaches and go on to Bayesian reasoning and confirmation theory. Finally, we'll examine recent developments in the Bayesian Net theory of causation.

This survey course studies the development of Western philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries by examining, as possibilities, selected writings of Descartes, Hobbes, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Cavendish, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Conway, Masham, Astell, Hume, and (barely) Kant. Topics include the emerging modern scientific background against which early modern Western philosophy developed; the nature, extent, and limits of human knowledge (early modern epistemology); and the nature of God, fundamental reality, and the mind (early modern metaphysics).

What kind of life should a person live? What can we know about the world? Do we have souls that are separate from our bodies? The aim of the course is to learn how to do philosophy by engaging with philosophical thinkers throughout the globe. We read some philosophers from the Western tradition (such as Plato or Kant) alongside philosophers from other historical traditions, such as the Chinese and Persian traditions (e.g., Laozi or Al-Ghazali), and we also read some contemporary thinkers from a variety of cultural traditions (such as James Baldwin or Gloria Anzaldua).

This course will explore cellular and molecular mechanisms of nervous system development and function through lectures, laboratory exercises, and the critical analysis of primary literature. Topics include synapse formation and synaptic transmission, neuronal-glial interactions, the molecular basis of behavior, and applied genetic engineering techniques.