Philosophy
- AAS 201/PHI 291: African American Studies and the Philosophy of RaceThis 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.
- CHV 310/PHI 385: Practical EthicsThis course will challenge you to examine your life from an ethical perspective. What should your goals and values be? We are living in a world in which some live in great affluence while others live in extreme poverty. Climate change poses a threat to both present and future generations, as well as to the natural environment. Is it enough to obey conventional moral rules? Other questions to be discussed include: abortion, euthanasia; the claim that all human life has equal value; the moral status of animals; and the ethics of what we eat. Topics of current interest may be added during the semester.
- FRE 560/PHI 504/COM 557: Medieval Speech ActsA seminar on medieval practices and theories of performative speech, from lies to oaths, promises, blessings, curses, deeds and sacraments. Readings are drawn from Old and Middle French poetry as well as earlier and later medieval grammar, logic and theology, where doctrines of "efficacious" signification and the force of words play major roles. To bring into focus the medieval treatments of speech acts, we also consider selected twentieth-century philosophical, linguistic and sociological accounts of performative speech (particularly by Austin, Benveniste and Goffman).
- PHI 202/CHV 202: Introduction to Moral PhilosophyAn introduction to central topics of moral philosophy. Questions include: What makes an action morally right or wrong, and why? Is the right action the one with the best consequences? Do our intentions matter for the rightness of our actions? Is there a moral difference between killing someone and letting someone die? Is there 'moral luck'? What makes someone's life go best for her? What is the moral status of future persons? Is abortion morally permissible? Is it permissible to kill animals to eat them? Is there a single true morality or is moral truth relative to cultures? Does anything really matter or did we just evolve to think so?
- PHI 203: Introduction to Metaphysics and EpistemologyAn introduction to central questions of philosophy. Topics include: The rationality of religious belief, our knowledge of the external world, freedom of the will and the identity of persons over time.
- PHI 304: Topics in Kant's Philosophy: An Examination of Kant's Critique of Pure ReasonThis course provides a comprehensive introduction to the central arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant's principal theoretical work.
- PHI 313: Theory of KnowledgeWe live our lives thinking we know a lot of stuff:it is 3pm, I have hands...But do we really know any of this? If a skeptic challenges us to prove that we are not living in a computer simulation, what could we say? How can we justify our beliefs? Can two people with the same evidence rationally disagree? We form beliefs spontaneously, but can we also sometimes control what we believe? Can we rationally believe something just because believing it will bring about good consequences? In what ways are we responsible for our beliefs? Can our practices of gaining and sharing knowledge bring about social injustice and if so, what can we do about it?
- PHI 315/CHV 315/CGS 315: Philosophy of MindThis course focuses on classical and contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind including the mind-body problem, the problem of consciousness, the problem of introspection and the problem of other minds.
- PHI 325: Philosophy of ReligionAn examination of the possibility and nature of religious knowledge, from both historical and systematic (analytic) points of view. We will read discussions of religious belief by several key figures in the history of western philosophy, as well as by contemporary philosophers. Special emphasis will be placed on the relationship between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge; the relationship between religious knowledge and participation in a religious life; and the relationship between religious belief and the will.
- PHI 332/POL 401/ECS 314: Early Modern PhilosophyTopic: Hobbes and Spinoza on Religion and Politics-- Hobbes began a revolution in our understanding of the material world, human beings and society, and Spinoza extended it in even more radical directions. In this course, we will examine the interconnections between politics and religion in these two original and highly influential thinkers, and how their metaphysics and natural philosophy contributed to their vision of the world.
- PHI 334/LIN 334: SemanticsHuman beings have a distinct capacity to communicate through language. Our linguistic capacity allows us to understand sentences we have never encountered before, and generate indefinitely many novel, meaningful sentences by exploiting a finite vocabulary. It also underscores our ability to communicate thoughts to each other. How is this possible? And how is it that our sentences are meaningful to begin with? This course is an introduction to semantics, the study of linguistic meaning. You will learn about formal tools and techniques of semantic theory that allow us to develop formally precise theories of linguistic meaning.
- PHI 411/CHV 411/POL 407: Free Speech in the Internet AgeThis seminar will examine how the global reach and new technologies of the internet change the theory and practice of free speech. Questions we will discuss include: How do philosophical defenses of the right to freedom of expression, developed in the age of the town square and the printing press, apply in the internet age? How should international conflicts over on-line speech be resolved? Is there a universal human right to freedom of expression or are there only culturally specific free speech regimes? How has the internet facilitated new speech-based harms such as cyber-stalking and revenge porn, and how should these harms be addressed?
- PHI 516/HOS 593: Special Topics in the History of Philosophy: Rationalist Physics: Descartes Hobbes and LeibnizIn this seminar, we examine a certain style of natural philosophy in the 17thC, which emphasizes metaphysics and rational principles, as found in Descartes, Hobbes, and Leibniz. Topics covered include speculations on the nature of body, the laws of nature, the notion of force, and large-scale principles that were taken to govern the material world. We study the mechanist thought in Descartes and Hobbes, and how it evolves into Leibniz's dynamics.
- PHI 519/CHV 519: Normative Ethics: Humans vs. Animals: Agriculture, Climate Change, and JusticeThis seminar explores recent work in animal ethics with a focus on questions that arise in the context of climate change and agriculture. Questions include: Are familiar views about well-being, rights, population ethics, and distributive justice equally plausible when applied to animals? How should we make tradeoffs between the interests of humans, individual animals, and species? Does responsibility for avoiding collective harms lie with individuals or groups? Can we make progress in animal ethics by using cognitive science? Can we make progress on policy debates by factoring moral uncertainty into our deliberation?
- PHI 525: Ethics: Moral PhilosophySome topics in moral philosophy. A full syllabus will be available at least one week before the semester, by email from vmcgeer@princeton.edu and/or mfricker@princeton.edu.
- PHI 534: Philosophy of Language: Linguistics and Philosophy of Pejorative LanguagePejorative language provides powerful linguistic weapons; it is prone to provoke an offensive sting. But what is the nature and source of this offense? The predominant assumption has been that pejorative language is offensive because of some aspect of meaning - either semantically encoded or pragmatically conveyed. In this seminar, we reconsider this widespread assumption, and defend an alternative: the source of a pejorative effect is neither meaning nor even language.
- PHI 536: Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematical RigorAn exploration of the gap between what logical theory recognizes as a proof and what mathematical practice recognizes as a proof.
- PHI 540: Metaphysics: TimeThis course is a survey of some contemporary work in the metaphysics of time, broadly construed. Topics that may be covered include the relation between experience and time, the existence of past and future objects, persistence over time, relativity and time, the direction of time, and the time reversibility of the laws of physics.
- PHI 550: First Year Philosophy Graduate Student Seminar: Classic Papers in Analytic PhilosophyA seminar for first-year graduate students in philosophy. Issues discussed vary from year to year.
- PHI 599: Dissertation SeminarOpen to post-generals students actively working on their dissertations. The seminar aims at assisting students in their research and writing and at developing their teaching skills by improving their ability to present advanced material to less expert audiences. Students give 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. The seminar meets for two hours each week throughout the academic year.
- POL 518/PHI 529: Political Philosophy: The StateWhat is the state or polity? How does it relate to law? Is it necessarily or ideally a corporate agent? If so, can its power be distributed among separate bodies? How does it relate to the people? Can the people be the sovereign? What are the limitations on what, by its nature, the state can or may do? How can or may it act in determining property, finance and the rights of corporations? The course covers questions like these, drawing both on classical figures like Bodin, Hobbes, Locke, Kant and Rousseau and contemporary legal and political philosophers.