This course introduces students to the field of African American Studies through an examination of the complex experiences, both past and present, of Americans of African descent. Through a multidisciplinary perspective, it reveals the complicated ways we come to know and live race in the United States. Students engage classic texts in the field, all of which are framed by a concern with epistemologies of resistance and of ignorance that offer insight into African American thought and practice.

A historical introduction to philosophy since 1600, emphasizing close reading of classic texts, but including some attention to the scientific, religious, political, literary, and other context.

Can questions about what is right or wrong have real answers independent of any sort of divine authority? Are there moral principles that any rational person must recognize, or is morality essentially an expression of our feelings or a product of our culture? Are we morally required to do our part in making the world as good as it can be, or does morality give us permission to pursue our own peculiar enthusiasms and interests? What should we do about deception, unwanted pregnancies, and world hunger? This course will provide an overview of these and other issues in moral philosophy.

Sexism, misogyny, and gender injustice are grave moral and political wrongs. This course covers a range of key topics in feminist political philosophy that are still essential to contemporary issues. What is oppression? What is sexism? What is gender? How does intersectionality complicate our understanding of these questions? We'll also consider more specific political issues that feminist philosophers have grappled with. What does a transnational feminism look like? Are professions which are primarily gender-based compatible with justice? What policies are appropriate to address a gender division of labor?

The course surveys philosophical issues in the study of consciousness and the nature of the self. Questions include: What is consciousness? How can a material thing be conscious? Does the fact that we are conscious suggest that everything is conscious? Does consciousness need a subject, and if so, what sort of being might it be? What would it take for a machine to exhibit consciousness, and how should the possibility of artificial consciousness inform AI research and the implementation of AI systems in the near future.

Why do we like some works of art more than others? Can an evil artwork be beautiful? How do aesthetic and interpretive norms vary across mediums? The aim of this course is to introduce students to philosophical issues about the nature of art objects and their interpretation, with a special focus on film and literature. On-going topics of discussion will include the relationship between moral and aesthetic evaluation, the interpretive significance of medium, and the nature of fictional representation. Assignments will include watching films, which will be central subjects of class conversation.

This course will focus on philosophy and the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will read a mixture of philosophical and scientific tests, as well as some contemporary tests in the philosophy of science. We will discuss both the relations between science and philosophy, as well as the way these historical episodes are reflected in more recent philosophical literature.

This course investigates the concept of "objectivity", especially in regard to science and religion. We begin with the revolt against objectivity by 19th-century religious thinkers such as Kierkegaard, and the impact this revolt had on the development of the sciences - in particular, the revolutions in physics of the early 20th century. We also consider the scope of objectivity in the social sciences, as well as the relationship between objectivity and values in accepting scientific theories, making religious commitments, and forming beliefs in other domains.

A study of Plato's last dialogue, Laws, with emphasis on understanding its philosophical doctrines and the ways they are developed and defended over the course of a long and complex literary composition. Topics addressed include the origin, goals, and proper formulation of law; virtue, education, and the ethical importance of art; freedom and the rule of law; and a detailed blueprint for the constitution and statutes of an ideal city. On many of these points readers familiar with the Republic may be surprised by what they find in the Laws.

The seminar studies Aristotle's views about causation and explanation in his Generation of Animals, focusing on Books 4 and 5. Special attention is paid to his ideas about the material cause in thinking about the roles of female parents and of the environment.

This course ranges over metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics and specific aspects of the history of philosophy. We investigate what it is rational to care about in caring about survival or continued existence, and whether our account of what it is rational to care about should change if we discover either that (1) there is no separable human soul or (2) there is no self or subject behind our various conscious acts or (3) that selves are merely conventional or even merely apparent objects or (4) we are laid out in time in the same way as we are in space by having temporal parts as well as spatial parts.

This graduate seminar provides a graduate-level introduction to some topic(s) within moral, social and political philosophy. A detailed syllabus is made available before the semester starts.

In this seminar, we apply theories of risk-taking to the epistemic domain to illuminate the norms that govern belief, credence, and related epistemic phenomena. Along the way, we consider applications to traditional epistemological debates, such as what knowledge requires, whether there is more than one rational doxastic response to a body of evidence, and whether practical or moral considerations make a difference to what we should believe.

The seminar surveys some of the key topics in contemporary philosophy of language, focusing particularly on debates about context-sensitivity, and meta-semantics of context-sensitivity resolution. The seminar is taught at Princeton and Rutgers and alternates location on a weekly basis.

Philosophical issues about space and time - from the early modern period to the present. Some of the issues covered include: substantivalism vs. relationism, incongruent counterparts, spacetime symmetries, apriori knowledge, non-Euclidean geometry, conventionalism, and Einstein's hole argument. Readings are drawn from Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Berkeley, Kant, Poincaré, Reichenbach, Earman, and Maudlin, among others.

A seminar for first-year graduate students in philosophy. Readings will be drawn primarily from contemporary analytic philosophy.

A course designed to promote cohesion among second year cohort; to fill in gaps in knowledge of classic and contemporary readings in philosophy and offer opportunity to share work in progress.

Open to post-generals students actively working on their dissertations. The seminar aims at assisting students in the research and writing and at developing their teaching skills by improving their ability to present advanced material to less expert audiences. Students make presentations of work in progress, discuss each other's work, and share common pedagogical problems and solutions under the guidance of one or more faculty members. It meets for two hours each week throughout the academic year.

Statehood proper requires citizens to know how roughly they stand relative to authorities and other citizens. But what is needed if the state is to be a just republic? First, demands of civic or democratic justice on the standing citizens ought to have vis-à-vis the authorities under decision-maker law; second, demands of social justice on the standing they ought vis-à-vis one another under decision-taker law. On the first count, we explore issues in constitutional and democratic theory; on the second, questions related to distributive justice in general and some particular areas like labor justice and criminal justice.

An examination of the most influential theoretical, pragmatic, and moral arguments regarding the existence and nature of God (or gods). Along the way, we consider debates about whether and how we can talk or think about such a being, and about whether mystical experience, miracles, and the afterlife are intelligible notions. Finally, we consider whether religious commitment might be rationally acceptable without any proof or evidence, and whether the real-world fact of religious diversity has philosophical implications. Course readings will be taken from both historical and contemporary sources.

We are what we eat--morally as well as molecularly. So how should moral concerns about animals, workers, the environment, our health, and our communities inform our food choices? Can we develop an effective and just model for feeding growing populations while respecting religious, class, and cultural differences? The main goal of this course is not to prescribe answers to these questions, but to give students tools to reflect on them effectively. These tools include a working knowledge of the main ethical theories in philosophy, and a grasp of key empirical issues regarding the production, distribution, consumption, and politics of food.

This course offers an introduction to deep learning, which is the core technology behind most modern AI applications, aimed at students with minimal coding experience/mathematical background. Emphasis will be placed on gaining a conceptual understanding of deep learning models and on practicing the basic coding skills required to use them in simple contexts. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand, code and train a variety of basic deep learning models, including basic neural nets, image recognition models, and natural language processing models. As a capstone, students will build their own tiny GPT-style text generator.