Graduate Course
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Spring 2010 Courses
500 THESIS
01 TBA – SEE SUSAN WILLIAMS OR ANN BEARDSLEY BEFORE REGISTERING IN THIS CLASS
502 REGISTRATION/USE OF FACILITIES
01 TBA – SEE SUSAN WILLIAMS OR ANN BEARDSLEY BEFORE REGISTERING IN THIS CLASS
510 PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH
01 TBA – SEE SUSAN WILLIAMS OR ANN BEARDSLEY BEFORE REGISTERING IN THIS CLASS
520 SPECIAL TOPICS – HELENISTIC PHILOSOPHY
01 2.10-3.25 TR – SHAW – This course provides a graduate-level survey of the three main philosophical schools of the Hellenistic period (traditionally, the late 4th through the late 1st centuries BCE): Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism (mainly the Pyrrhonist revival, but we will also touch on the skeptical Academy). We will pay special attention to the relationships among the parts of philosophy, and especially to how logic and physics inform ethics. The material is difficult in its own right, and is made more difficult by the fact that the preserved texts are often fragmentary and preserved by authors hostile to our schools or who simply have other agendas than accurate reporting of what those schools say. Undergraduate students should therefore enroll in the course only if they have substantial background in philosophy, including the history of philosophy, and all students should be prepared to spend substantial time on the readings.
524 SPECIAL TOPICS – NIETZSCHE
019.40-10.55 TR – NOLT - A study of the development of several major and apparently conflicting themes in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche: will to power, perspectivalism, overcoming of nihilism, the disvalue of truth, and eternal recurrence. We will read (in the order in which Nietzsche wrote them) The Birth of Tragedy, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo and perhaps parts of other works by Nietzsche and secondary sources. Grades will be based on in-class tests and critical papers.
544 MEDICAL ETHICS THEORY
01 11.10-12.25 – HARDWIG – This class will focus on developing the knowledge and skills required to operate successfully as a bioethicist in a clinical setting. We will read Beauchamp & Childress, Principles of Biomedical ethics, Buchanan & Brock, Deciding for Others, and selected articles on the cost crisis in American medicine and responses to it. THIS CLASS IS A PREREQUISITE FOR THE CLINICAL PRACTICUM NEXT SUMMER. (The department cannot promise that the practicum will be offered again.)
591 FOREIGN STUDY
01 TBA – SEE SUSAN WILLIAMS OR ANN BEARDSLEY BEFORE REGISTERING IN THIS CLASS
592 OFF-CAMPUS STUDY
01 TBA – SEE SUSAN WILLIAMS OR ANN BEARDSLEY BEFORE REGISTERING IN THIS CLASS
593 INDEPENDENT STUDY
01 TBA – SEE SUSAN WILLIAMS OR ANN BEARDSLEY BEFORE REGISTERING IN THIS CLASS
600 DOCTORAL RESEARCH/DISSERTATION
01 TBA – SEE SUSAN WILLIAMS OR ANN BEARDSLEY BEFORE REGISTERING IN THIS CLASS
624 PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
01 2.30-5.30 M - DOUGLAS - The period of 1900 to 1960 was one of the most formative and complex periods in the development of the philosophy of science. During that period, the main journals were founded, many of the canonical texts were written, and the field professionalized, changing from an arena of conversation between scientists and philosophers to something one could do within a disciplinary framework. Yet as recent scholarship has revealed, the story of the triumph of logical positivism over other views, is a gross oversimplification of what happened during this period. Logical positivism was both a more complex movement than was initially supposed, and was challenged strongly even as it was most transcendent. In addition, it initially made allies with those it was later to eclipse.
This course will provide a survey of this turbulent period, and in doing so, provide an introduction to many of the key texts in philosophy of science. We will read work by Duhem, Poicaré, Popper, Carnap, Fleck, Reichenbach, Dewey, Neurath, and Hanson (among others), as well as secondary sources that will help contextualize and elucidate their work.