This course is meant to serve as an introduction to some of the standard question about living a meaningful life. We will look at some of the following questions: (i) Does life have meaning?, (ii) How should we respond to the fact that life may be meaningless?, (iii) what counts as a good life?, (iv) what is the relationship between death and the good life? In answering these, and related questions, we will focus on the practical applications of philosophical wisdom, and how to translate such wisdom into our daily living.

This course is intended to serve as an introduction to major philosophical issues by studying how these issues relate to prominent questions most of us have about life and death. The majority of the class will be focused on three major subfields in philosophy: ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. The overall goal is to (1) give one insight into how philosophers think about these issues, while also giving one insight into how philosophers try to think in general, and (2) to build the skill sets that are important for the study of philosophy (critical thinking, clear and concise writing, understanding argumentative structure, etc.).

This course is meant to serve as an introduction to some of the standard moral problems that philosophers think about. The content of the course will be focused around issues of theoretical ethics. In particular, we will be looking at two of the major subfields in ethics: metaethics and normative ethics. We will look at questions such as: Is there an objective moral good, or is morality subjective? Can we ever know what is moral? How should I act?

In this course we will look at some of the standard problems faced by philosophers in the field of applied ethics. We will look at topics such as: abortion, euthanasia, gun control, the permissibility of eating meat, and duties of charity, to name a few. The goal is to give students the ability to analyze these problems in philosophical ways, so that students can see the complexity of the issues at hand, while also having the tools to develop their views on the subjects being discussed.

In this course we will be studying the problematic issue of values in environmental ethics, as well as the ways in which environmental values have normative implications at both a social/political/cultural level (what government would be ideologically best for environmental concerns) and an individual level (should we eat meat?).

In this course we will be looking at the interplay of social justice and environmental issues. Thus, we will spend part of the class examining ethical and social/political frameworks, and their relations to environmental concerns, before moving on to individualized topics. In particular, we will look at questions of justice related to: individuals currently experiencing the negative effects of a changing climate, future generations, and nonhuman animals.

This course is meant to introduce students to a range of ethical considerations which one confronts in the Business world. The aim is to carefully consider ethical questions, problems, and dilemmas found in the business world, and to develop the conceptual tools to find solutions to such questions, problems, and dilemmas. We will be examining proper business conduct in relation to issues of social and distributive justice, corporate responsibility, employee and human rights, globalization, environmental issues, and government intervention. We will also explore what it means for a business to have a positive societal impact, and ways to achieve that goal.

This course will examine the nature of science. What makes the difference between scientific theories and nonscientific ones? Is there a special kind of reasoning for science, or just a special subject matter? Does science have a greater claim to knowledge? What are the limits of science? Can religion and morality be turned into sciences, or is there a fundamental gap of some sort between these different realms? We will consider these questions both naively and in terms of a set of philosophical theories of science that have been developed over the past century. We will also examine a variety of long-standing conceptual problems in particular sciences, including mathematics.

The focus of this course will be inquiry broadly construed, as well as scientific inquiry, and the ethical and political dimensions of scientific inquiry. We will be asking about the fundamental nature of inquiry, the nature of scientific inquiry, and the values that should inform scientific research. We will use different forms of media, both historical and contemporary: scholarly articles and books, literature, a theater script, journalism, and film.