Bryn Mawr College

 

Tri-Co Courses Offered

Bryn Mawr's department of philosophy cooperates extensively with the the department at Haverford and Swarthmore, enabling the major to experience a wide variety of approaches to philosophy as well as additional course offerings. Each year, the philosophy departments of Bryn Mawr and Haverford co-sponsor a lecture in philosophy.

Students may enroll in courses at Haverford or at Swarthmore College. These courses may satisfy Bryn Mawr requirements, but a student should check with the chair of the department to make sure a specific course meets a requirement.

Tri-Co Course Guide

Philosophy Courses at Haverford

Philosophy Courses at Swarthmore

101 (01): Happiness and Reality in Ancient Thought
This course is an introduction to some of the central questions of philosophy: How is the mind related to the body? What is knowledge and truth? What is the good life and why should we be moral? What is philosophy? We will address these questons by considering some of the first philosophers of the western tradition. We will start with Socrates’ conception of philosophy and consider his influence on four philosophers with very different worldviews: Plato’s rationalism, Aristotle’s naturalism, Sextus’ skepticism and Augustine’s theism. In addition to understanding how these philosophers responded to each other, we will focus on evaluating their arguments and developing our own views.

 

101: Wisdom from the Ancient World

This is a College Seminar class open to all first year students.

Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom: through it we aim to understand the world in order to lead a fulfilling, meaningful life. This course is an introduction to philosophy by way of its historical beginnings in ancient Greece. We will read the Pre-Socratics, Plato (the early Socratic dialogues, Republic) and Aristotle (De Anima, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics), concentrating on their views about the existence of God, the nature of mind, knowledge and the good life. In addition to considering how these philosophers responded to each other, we will focus on how they speak to us now across millennia, and more generally, how philosophy is both historically rooted and universal.

201 (01): Historical Introduction to Philosophy: Modern
Can consciousness be explained from an objective perspective? Is knowledge based primarily on reason or perception? Is belief in God incompatible with reason? What are the foundations of morality? These questions in their contemporary form were first articulated in the modern period, broadly from the 17th - 19th centuries. In this course we will address them by reading some of the major philosophers of this period: Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill and Nietzsche. Our aim will be to understand how these philosophers responded to each other, and to also evaluate their arguments and to thereby develop our own views.

201 (02): Historical Introduction to Philosophy: Modern
In this course, we will read and interpret the works of major philosophers across the spectrum of modern philosophy, including writings by Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. The emphasis will be on metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. The metaphysical questions posed by these authors concern the fundamental nature of reality: questions about the existence and attributes of mind, matter and God. Other questions concern the characteristics and limitations of the human intellect and the human will: questions about the possibility of human freedom and about the sources and scope of human knowledge.

The aim of the course is not to provide a survey of philosophical activity from Descartes to Kant, but rather to focus upon selected writings appropriate to the above themes. This will allow students to go beyond reading about the work of major modern philosophers, to the analysis and interpretation of the works themselves. Requirements: 4 papers (no exams) and participation in class discussion.

INTERMEDIATE COURSES

204: Readings in German Intellectual History: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and the Rhetoric of    Modernity

Study of selected texts of German intellectual history, introducing representative works of thinkers such as Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Jürgen Habermas, Georg W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Werner Heisenberg, Immanuel Kant, G. E. Lessing, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Schiller, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The course aims to introduce students to an advanced cultural reading range and the languages and terminologies of humanistic disciplines in German-speaking countries, and seeks to develop their critical and interpretive skills. Course content varies. Topic for Spring 2010: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and the Rhetoric of Modernity. Previous topics include: The Enlightenment and Its Critics. (cross-listed as GERM 212).

209: Philosophical Approaches to Criticism
An introduction to various methods of reading the literary text from the perspective of critical methods informed by philosophical ideas. In their quest for self-understanding and knowledge, literature and philosophy share similar forms of inquiry and imaginative modeling. Through investigations of perception, language, and memory, philosophers, ancient and modern, have pondered the question of how human beings are capable of knowledge. The literary text embodies the implications of the philosophical questions concerning the dialectics of reality and appearance, sign and representation, speech and writing, and necessity and freedom. It fleshes out, so to speak, the abstract skeleton of philosophy and lends it a material aesthetic form. Selected readings focus primarily on questions of language, understanding, interpretation, and the idea of the self in its relation to history, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. One of the main objectives of the course is to provide the student with the critical tools necessary for an informed and critical reading of literary and theoretical texts. (cross-listed w/COMPL 209 & German 209)

211: Theory of Knowledge
This course will be an introduction to the theory of knowledge, or epistemology. We will examine in detail arguments about two central concerns of epistemologists in the 20th Century: skepticism about our knowledge of objects in the external world, and epistemological naturalism.
We will begin by considering arguments from Descartes, Barry Stroud, and others, who argue that our everyday beliefs about objects in the world around us might have no justification whatsoever. We’ll then turn to responses to these arguments from J.L. Austin and others like him who offer reasons for suspicion about the philosophical validity of epistemological skepticism. Finally, in the writings of W.V. Quine and others, we’ll consider epistemological naturalism. In particular, we’ll seek to understand how this view develops the suspicion that the skeptical problem is somehow ill-posed or poorly understood, and seeks to use the resources of natural science (like, say, cognitive psychology) to answer philosophical questions about knowledge and the justification of belief.
Requirements: 2 papers, a final exam, and participation in class discussion.

212: Metaphysics: Free Will and Personal Identity
Prerequisite: at least one course in philosophy is recommended.
Metaphysics is the inquiry into some of the most basic features of the world and ourselves. In this course we will consider two central topics of metaphysics. In the first half we will focus on free will: What is free will and are we free? Is freedom compatible with determinism? Does moral responsibility require free will? In the second half we will focus on personal identity: What makes someone the same person over time? Can a person survive without their body? Is the recognition of others required to be a person? Throughout the course we will also consider the relation between free will and personal identity. Readings will include Frankfurt, Hegel, Parfit, Sartre, Strawson and Williams.

221: Ethics
Christine Koggel
Ethics is a branch of philosophy concerned with determining what we ought to do and why. This course extends this inquiry by exploring answers to the question “How should we live our lives and interact with others?” in the context of the international community or “global village” in which we now live. To that end, we examine the works of liberal and non-liberal theorists from around the world on the subjects of human diversity and equality, poverty and social welfare, and the nature of individual choice and social responsibility. Specific topics include: non-Western responses to Western conceptions of equality and justice; new accounts of social transformation including conceptions of human diversity and difference; sources of personal and community identity for those identified and treated as different within and across cultures; and frameworks for understanding notions of shared responsibility in areas such as discrimination, poverty, reproductive rights, pornography and censorship, animal rights, and environmental degradation.
      In the first section of the course, we examine theories of equality and accounts of difference and diversity among human beings. We critically evaluate these theories in light both of the relativist appeal for tolerance with respect to different moral practices in various cultures and of recent challenges to traditional theory by feminist, non-western, race, class, and disability theorists. In the second section of the course, we use insights from these various challenges to explore the nature, extent, and kinds of discrimination both within and across cultures. In the final section, we discuss the implications of our examination of traditional and contemporary approaches to moral theory for the following practical issues: reproductive issues, euthanasia, pornography, animal rights, and the environment.

Texts: Moral Issues in Global Perspective. Christine Koggel (editor). Second Edition. Broadview Press, 2006.
Volume II: Diversity and Equality AND Volume III: Moral Issues

222: Aesthetics: The Nature and Experience of Art
Prerequisite: One introductory course in philosophy.
Here are some questions we will discuss in this course: What sort of thing is a work of art? Can criticism in the arts be objective? Do such cultural entities answer to more than one admissible interpretation? What is the role of a creator's intentions in fixing upon admissible interpretations? What is the nature of aesthetic experience? What is creativity in the arts? Discussions will be based on contemporary readings.
Requirements: Three papers (8-10 pages each) and one seminar presentation. Presentations should not exceed 20-30 minutes, devoted equally to explication and critique of the designated reading. These four assignments will be weighed equally for your final grade.
Readings will be drawn from contemporary sources from the analytic and continental traditions, including John Dewey, Art As Experience, and works in Gary Iseminger, ed., Intention and Interpretation and Joseph Margolis, ed., Philosophy Looks at the Arts.
(Cross-listed w/COMPL 222)

228: Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ancient and Early Modern
Stephen Salkever
An introduction to a tradition of discourse that draws attention to politics as a particular kind of human activity, and then turns that activity into a question--problematizes it, asking how, when, and why political activity is and/or isn't a good thing for human beings. Writers in this tradition then propose different and conflicting ways of discussing that question. To enter that tradition is to experience the strangeness of what is being said, to try to understand it, and to respond in your own terms. This is what you will be doing in the papers you write for this course. What is to be learned here is a set of different answers to the question, What are the basic questions we should ask about political life and about human life generally? In our time, we generally take those questions to be ones about human freedom or autonomy: What is genuine freedom, and under what circumstances can we best attain it? We will see that familiar formulation being invented by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau. But our time isn't the only time, and this course concerns alternatives, primarily the alternative supplied by Greek political philosophy, by Plato and Aristotle.
Requirements: Written work in the course will be 4 short (3-5 page) papers, and two take-home exams, a mid-term and a final. Both exams consist of identification and brief discussion of passages discussed in class. The papers will be based on the readings assigned for class, and should be treated as an extension of class discussion (rather than as research papers). Paper topics will be distributed in class one week before the paper is due; papers that are handed in on time will be returned one week after the due date with comments but without grades. Students may, at their discretion, hand in papers up to a total of ten days late over the course of the semester. More than ten days of aggregate lateness will result in a grade penalty. I determine course grades primarily on the basis of the papers, with exams as a secondary factor. Informed participation in class discussion is expected, and will count as one element in determining the final grade.
(cross-listed with Political Science 228).

230: Discrete Mathematics

An introduction to discrete mathematics with strong applications to computer science. Topics include set theory, functions and relations, propositional logic, proof techniques, recursion, counting techniques, difference equations, graphs, and trees.                                                  (Cross-listed with Math 231 & Computer Science 231)

238: Science, Technology and the Good Life
Robert Dostal

Prerequisite: 1 philosophy course OR 1 lab science course

This course considers a set of questions concerning what is science, what is technology, and what is their relationship to each other and to the domain of ethics and politics. We will pursue this set of questions both historically and in the contemporary context. Historically we will consider how modern science defined itself in its opposition to Aristotelian science. We will read selections from Aristotle and Galileo. We will examine the Cartesian and Baconian scientific models and the self-understanding of these models with regard to ethics and politics. Against this background a number of contemporary developments in the philosophy of science will be considered, e.g., positivism, phenomenology, feminism, sociology of science. Some of the issues raised include claims that technology has become autonomous, that contemporary politics are necessarily technocratic, that a two-culture split makes conversation between the scientific realm and the humanistic realm impossible, that science and technology are “masculine” domains, that science has become ideological, and so on. Is the U.S.A. the republic of technology? Issues in biotechnology and information technology illustrate fundamental questions. The “science wars” of the 1990’s provide another set of debates (better: polemics) concerning science, technology, and the good life. Readings will include selections (some quite brief) from Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Kant, Husserl, Sellars, Taylor, Habermas, Arendt, Heidegger, Longino, Merchant, Havel, Boorstein, Borgmann, Ellul, and other contemporary authors. Requirements: 4 or 5 short papers. (Cross-listed with Political Science 238)

245: Philosophy of Law
Jeremy Elkins

This course explores a variety of topics in the philosophy of law such as: the nature and ends of law, law and pluralism, feminist jurisprudence, and civil disobedience.                                             (Cross-listed with Political Science 245)

252: Feminist Theory
Christine Koggel

Beliefs that discrimination on the basis of gender has been eliminated and that women have achieved equality have become commonplace in recent times. This course begins by challenging these assumptions through an examination of the concepts of patriarchy, sexism, and oppression. In the process of exploring these concepts central to feminist theory, we pay attention to the history of feminist theory as well as contemporary accounts of women's place and status in different societies, their varied experiences, and how the phenomenon of globalization impacts on all this. This examination then forms the base from which we explore the relevance of gender to philosophical questions about identity and agency and with respect to moral, social, and political theory.
       Our main text is Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. The authors in the collection reflect the diverse perspectives of women and the importance of taking them into account in theory of all kinds. Throughout, we will discover that some of the challenges to feminism come from within by feminists who argue that factors other than gender are significant to both the analysis of the moral, social, legal, and political structures that perpetuate conditions of oppression for many and the project of challenging those structures. In the last part of the course, we apply what we have learned from feminist insights about the ways in which our identities, values, and relationships are shaped by experiences and social conditions, to feminist strategies for change in particular contexts and historical periods and to recent developments in feminist theory           (Cross-listed with Political Science; 253 counts toward Feminist and Gender Studies)

PHIL 254: Philosophy of Religion
Bharath Vallabha

This course is an introduction to some of the principle topics in the philosophy of religion. Does God exist? Is belief in God compatible with reason and science? Is God’s existence compatible with deep suffering and pain? Does the fact that there are many religions show that there is no religious truth? Readings will be from eastern and western traditions, as well as from analytic and continental philosophy. Authors will include Aquinas, Aurobindo, Dalai Lama, Dennett, James, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein.

PHIL 259: Philosophy, Modern Physics and Ideals of Interpretation
Michael Krausz/Elizabeth McCormack

Prerequisite: One course in Philosophy or Physics or permission of an instructor. Sophomore standing.
This interdisciplinary course addresses these questions: How do the interpretive ideals in modern physics compare with those in the human sciences? In modern physics, does interpretation affect that which is interpreted? Must there be a fact of the matter independently of all interpretive practices? Must there be a single right interpretation for all natural phenomena? Readings include various articles and texts including Peter Kosso, Appearance and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics; Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; and Michael Krausz (ed.) Is There a Single Right Interpretation? (cross-listed w/Physics 259)

PHIL 293: The Play of Interpretation (Comparative Literature 293) 

Azade Seyhan

Fall 2010

A study of the methodologies and regimes of interpretation in the arts, humanistic sciences, and media and cultural studies, this course focuses on common problems of text, authorship, reader/spectator, and translation in their historical and formal contexts. Literary, oral, and visual texts from different cultural traditions and histories will be studied through interpretive approaches informed by modern critical theories. Readings in literature, philosophy, popular culture, and film will illustrate how theory enhances our understanding of the complexities of history, memory, identity, and the trials of modernity. (cross-listed w/COMPL 293(

ADVANCED COURSES


319: Philosophy of Mind: Philosophy of Emotions
Bharath Vallabha

Prerequisites: One course in philosophy or permission of instructor.

Our lives are filled with emotions such as love, happiness, envy, boredom and excitement, and they are central to our experience of the world. In this seminar we will focus on the following questions: What is the nature and phenomenology of emotions? Can there be unconscious emotions? Are emotions in the brain or are they forms of behavior? Are emotions guided by reason or are they beyond the control of reason? Readings will include Damasio, Freud, James, Nussbaum, Sartre, Soloman and others.

321: Greek Political Philosophy (Aristotle: Ethics and Politics)
Stephen Salkever

Prerequisites: At least two semesters of philosophy or political philosophy, including some work with Greek texts, or consent of the instructor.
A careful reading of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, treated as a single series of lectures designed to lead its immediate Greek audience (the equivalent of Socrates’ interlocutors in Plato)—and perhaps us as well--more deeply into the questions and problems that are Aristotle’s theoretical basis for the paradigmatically human activities of practical reason (phronêsis) and thoughtful choice (prohairesis). Additional readings from Aristotle’s Greek contemporaries and predecessors (including Plato and Thucydides), and from recent work designed to bring Aristotelian perspectives to bear on the moral and political issues of our own time.
(Cross listed with Political Science 320)

323: Culture and Interpretation
Michael Krausz
Prerequisite: A 200-level course in Philosophy.

This course will pursue such questions as the following. For all objects of interpretation, must there be a single right interpretation? If not, what is to prevent one from sliding into an interpretive anarchism? Does interpretation affect the nature or the number of an object of interpretation? Does the singularity or multiplicity of interpretations mandate either realism or constructivism or any other ontology? Discussions will be based on contemporary readings.
Requirements: Three papers (8-10 pages each) and one seminar presentation. Presentations should not exceed 20-30 minutes, devoted equally to explication and critique of the designated reading. These four assignments will be weighed equally for your final grade.                                      (Cross-listed with Comparative Literature 323)

326: Relativism: Cognitive and Moral
Michael Krausz

Prerequisite: A 200-level course in Philosophy.
Cognitive relativists believe that truth is relative to particular cultures or conceptual schemes. In an analogous way, moral relativists believe that moral rightness is relative to particular cultures of conceptual schemes. Relativistic theories of truth and morality are widely embraced in the current intellectual climate, and they are as perplexing as they are provocative. This course will examine varieties of relativism and their absolutistic counterparts. Readings will be drawn from contemporary sources.

 327: Political Philosophy: 1950 - Present: Arendt, Rawls, Foucault
Stephen Salkever

Prerequisites: POLS 228 and 231, or PHIL 101 and 201.
A study of 20th-century extensions of three traditions in Western political philosophy: the adherents of the German and English ideas of freedom and the founders of classical naturalism. Authors read include Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas, and John Rawls. Topics include the relationship of individual rationality and political authority, the “crisis of modernity,” and the debate concerning contemporary democratic citizenship. Enrollment is limited to 18 students. (cross-listed w/Political Science 327)

338: Phenomenology: Husserl and Heidegger
Robert Dostal
Prerequisites: two philosophy courses, at least one at the 200 level.                             Phenomenology is one of the most important philosophical movements of the 20th century. Existentialism, in large part, develops out of and in response to phenomenology. Many of the leading post-modernist (post-structuralist) thinkers began within or in response to phenomenology, e.g., Derrida and Foucault. This is an upper level seminar on the two seminal figures of the phenomenological movement: Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The approach of the seminar is textual. We will look closely at a selection of Husserl’s texts which may include The Cartesian Meditations, selections from his lectures on time consciousness and from his late work, The Crisis of European Sciences (1936). Our primary text by Heidegger is Being and Time (1927). Some of the significant critiques of phenomenology will be considered.
Questions the seminar addresses include the relation of phenomenology to modern philosophy, especially the philosophies of Descartes and Kant, the concept of truth, the notion of method in philosophy, the relation of philosophy phenomenologically-conceived to the empirical sciences and ordinary experience, and the understanding of time. In reading Husserl we will consider the concept of "crisis" as well as the understanding of the "european" status of the sciences. In reading Heidegger we will consider his dependence on and his critique of Husserl. We will get clear on the "transcendental," "hermeneutical," and "existential" character of Heidegger’s enterprise. And we will pay attention to the political ramifications of the work.

372: Artificial Intelligence
Deepak Kumar
Fall 2009
T Th 10:00 a.m.. - 11:30 a.m.
Prerequisites: Computer Science 206

A study of how to program computers to behave in ways normally attributed to human "intelligence." Topics include: heuristic vs algorithmic programming; cognitive simulation vs machine intelligence; problem solving; inference; natural language understanding; scene analysis; learning; and decision making. These are illustrated by programs from literature and programming assignments in appropriate programming languages (Common Lisp and Prolog)
(Cross-listed with Computer Science 372).

373: Spinoza
Jeremy Elkins

Prerequisite: Two semesters of work in Philosophy or Political Theory or the consent of the instructor.

New Course: An examination of Spinoza’s thought, in particular with respect to the relationship of minds and bodies, the nature of freedom and the character and aims of a good political community. Most of the readings will be Spinoza’s texts, although there will be some secondary readings as well.
(Cross listed with POLS B373) Enrollment limted to 15 students, with preference to Political Science and Philosophy majors.

398: Senior Seminar
Christine Koggel
The senior conference is a required course for majors in Philosophy. It is the course in which the research and writing of an undergraduate thesis is directed both in and outside of the class time. Students will meet sometimes with the class as a whole and sometimes with the Professor separately to present and discuss drafts of their theses.

399: Senior Seminar
The senior conference is a required course for majors in Philosophy. It is the course in which the research and writing of an undergraduate thesis is directed both in and outside of the class time. Students will meet sometimes with the class as a whole and sometimes with the Professor separately to present and discuss drafts of their theses.