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 from around the globe. We read some philosophers from the Western tradition (such as Plato and Sartre) alongside philosophers from other historical traditions, such as the Daoist thinker Zhuangzi and the Sufi mystic al-Ghazali, and we also read the work of more recent philosophers of color (such as Anthony Appiah and Maria Lugones).

Modern science has taught us surprising new things and modern technology has given us extraordinary new abilities. We can now prolong life in extraordinary ways, dramatically enhance our physical and cognitive abilities, collect and process remarkable amounts of data, and radically reshape the natural environment on local and global scales. This course is devoted to the critical study of moral problems that have been raised or affected by this newfound information and these newfound abilities.

What do we owe to ourselves and to others? Which actions are right, which are wrong, and how can we tell the difference? Can we give principled answers to questions like these, or is it just a matter of opinion? We will think critically about such questions and some key theoretical approaches to answering them. We will focus on central traditions of Western moral philosophy, typified by Mill, Kant, and Aristotle. We will also consider vexing contemporary moral issues with an eye to whether these theories can guide our actions.

Although quantum mechanics is a remarkably successful scientific theory, it also leads scientists to make extraordinary claims like that cats can be both dead and alive and that the state of a fundamental particle depends on whether someone one is observing it. In this class we will consider the various interpretations of quantum mechanics and the way in which those interpretations influence and are influenced by philosophical issues in science more generally.

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.

Philosophers through the ages have asked about the nature of happiness and its contribution to the 'good life.' Happiness is something we all want, but what is it? And why do we all want it so much? What makes us happy and why? Is a 'good life' also a happy one? This course will examine happiness from several different perspectives. We will look at what ancient and contemporary philosophers have said about the nature and importance of happiness in our lives and compare it with some recent work from the field of positive psychology.

This course puts into dialogue the ancient philosophical traditions of China, India, and Greece. We will explore their reflections and debates on how to live a good life, how to gain knowledge, and how to understand our place in the universe. Through close readings of texts, we will compare ancient philosophical conceptions, styles of discourse, and intellectual contexts. The course reconsiders the Eurocentric history and ideologies of many modern conceptions of philosophy.

We know it's wrong to kick puppies for fun -- morally wrong. But how do we know this? Wait -- do we know it? This class is about moral knowledge: what it is, if we have it, and how we get it (when we do have it). We'll consider questions in moral epistemology such as: Can we gain moral knowledge from testimony? What are the implications of the prevalence of moral disagreement? Do our evolutionary origins pose a challenge to our moral beliefs? And, more generally, should we be moral skeptics?

This comprehensive survey course explores the brain and the biological basis of behavior. We will examine the anatomy of the nervous system and the unique properties of the cells that make up the brain. We will discuss the mechanisms by which individual brain cells communicate with each other, and how networks of cells underlie more complex processes such as perception, learning, memory, and behavior.