The following descriptions of courses being offered by the Philosophy Department in Spring 2022 were submitted by the course instructors. Specific information regarding the dates, times, and locations of these courses may be found in the Registrar’s official Schedule of Courses for Spring 2022.
2000-Level Courses
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. R. Borges
The goal of this course is to introduce students to some of the main issues in Western Philosophy. We will do this by critically approaching classical and contemporary readings on question such as ‘What is philosophy?’, ‘What is knowledge?’, ‘How should we act?’, and ‘What is the meaning of life?’. A further goal is to introduce students to the methods and tools philosophers use when approaching philosophical questions. This course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement and the Writing (W) requirement (4000 words).
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. S. Duncan
This course is a general introduction to philosophy. The class will be divided into three sections. The first section will look at the philosophy of religion, focusing on arguments for and against the existence of God. The second section will consider topics related to the meaning of life. We will discuss how such things as pleasure, morality, love, and work relate to the value and meaning of life as a whole. The third section will look at some of the dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.
Throughout our discussion of these topics, we will have two main aims. The first is to come to understand some views that philosophers have had on these issues. The second is to develop your own skills in such matters as careful reading, critical thinking, and clear writing.
The class involves both lectures and discussion section meetings. Assessment will involve a three papers, a final exam, and regular in-class clicker quizzes. (We will use the iClicker Cloud system. The app is now free for UF students, and you do not need to purchase a physical clicker.)
There are two required books for the class: Torin Alter and Robert J. Howell, The God Dialogues (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), ISBN 9780195395594, list price $24.99; and Plato, Five Dialogues, second edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), ISBN 0872206335, list price $10.50.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. M. Gardner
Is it rational to believe in God? Do you really know what you think you know? How is your mind related to your brain? What is the right thing to do? This course will equip you with some philosophical methodology and some background information you can use to try to answer these and similar questions. We will survey some of the main topics in philosophy, including topics in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. Through class discussions and writing assignments, we will also practice using philosophical methods like logical argumentation and thought experiments. Students in this course can earn 4000 words towards the UF writing requirement (WR). This course also provides 3 credits towards the philosophy major or minor and is a general education – humanities (H) course. Since this is an introductory course, it presumes no background in philosophy.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — J. Gillespie
This is a general introduction to philosophy, with an emphasis on actively doing philosophy: understanding what philosophy is, the unique goods one can gain by doing philosophy, and actively engaging in the critical, open-minded thinking and writing characteristic of philosophy. After a brief introduction to philosophy itself and reasoning, we look at some of the most important and provocative questions throughout the discipline’s history. These question include: (i) does God exist?, (ii) do ordinary, everyday objects really exist?, (iii) do we possess free will?, (iv) are we the same person over time?, (v) what is knowledge? and what, if anything, can we know?, and (vi) are aesthetic truths objective or subjective? The emphasis throughout is on writing clearly about such elusive questions and presenting good reasons to endorse one answer over another. This is a writing intensive course, so the final grade for this course depends on your ability to write well enough to adequately communicate your thinking. You will have to write at least 6000 words to be eligible for the Writing Requirement. This course also counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirements.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — R. Huang
The patient and thorough exploration of philosophical questions is an ideal way to develop skills in clear writing and critical thinking. This course introduces the discipline of philosophy with a focus on developing those skills. Most of the semester is devoted to three traditional issues: (a) What is knowledge? What can we know? (b) What is free will? Is there reason to think we don’t have any free will? (c) What is morality all about? Are there facts about what is morally right and wrong? At the end of the semester, we will more briefly explore some famous questions about happiness and the meaning of life. The emphasis throughout is on writing clearly about such elusive questions and presenting good reasons to endorse one answer over another.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. A. Pismenny
This course will introduce you to some of the main topics of philosophy. Philosophy addresses some of the most fundamental questions in life. The main tool by which Philosophy addresses these questions is the human capacity to reason. You will find that philosophical answers are based on reasoned arguments, which analyze and seek to justify beliefs. Philosophy, therefore, is a sort of self-examination, in which you discover what you think, and then reflect on whether your opinions are really worth holding. To look critically at your own ideas is the essence of the life of reason.
During this course you will examine your views on several core philosophical topics such as what makes a good argument, the nature of morality, and social justice. You will read philosophical texts, analyze their arguments and evaluate their answers to the questions of the course, see how philosophical concepts can help you understand practical dilemmas, and express your ideas through arguments – both verbal and written – which present your reasons for holding your beliefs.
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues — Dr. L. Grant
This course serves as an introduction to philosophical thinking about contemporary moral topics. In addition to briefly exploring frameworks for ethical thinking, we will consider the following questions: Is abortion morally permissible? Is it okay to eat meat produced on factory farms? What is racism? Are affirmative action policies justifiable? Should we allow private citizens to own guns? Should young people be prioritized over the elderly in healthcare decisions? Students should expect several writing assignments of increasing length over the course of the semester.
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues (Online) — Dr. A. Pismenny
This course serves as an introduction to philosophical thinking about contemporary moral topics. In addition to briefly exploring frameworks for ethical thinking, we will tackle the following topics: abortion, ethics of technology, and ethics of intimate relationships: sexual, romantic, and friendship. Students should expect several short writing assignments as well as some longer writing assignments in fulfillment of the Gordon Rule requirement (4000 words).
IDS 2935 Ethics and the Public Sphere (Quest) — Dr. J. Rothschild
In this course, we will consider what it means to build and maintain an ethical public sphere, where ‘public sphere’ includes our public spaces, actions, and discourse, as well as our institutions, leaders, media, and more. Our primary ethical lens will be a set of virtue concepts: honesty, justice, courage, and humility. Using these concepts as anchors, we will explore such questions as: how do we find honest media? What work do we need to do to bring justice to our public institutions and spaces? Why is courage so important for good public leadership? What is the place of humility in learning, or in effective political discourse? Our source materials will be multi-disciplinary, and our methods will be drawn from traditions in the humanities and anchored in philosophical ethics.
IDS 2935 Conflict of Ideas (Quest) — Dr. R. Borges
It’s been suggested that war is the continuation of politics by different means (Klaus von Clausewitz). Some took that suggestion to meant that politics was the continuation of war by other means (Lenin). But, if war and politics are simply different ways in which we handle disagreement between people, within nations, and between nations, the analogy seems reasonable. war and politics sit at different ends of the same spectrum — ways in which we disagree. But, if the choice between the conflict of ideas and real conflict is so obvious (politics harm ideas, while wars harm real people), why do real conflicts keep happening? How can we understand what happens when people disagree — especially when they disagree about important or emotionally powerful issues? How can we resolve our disagreements in a principled fashion? Since the issues are important, we cannot just agree to disagree: we must learn how to have a fair fight. But how do we fight fair on the battleground of ideas?
The focus of the course will be on the conflict of ideas, and on how students can make a positive and lasting impact on the conflicts they will encounter in their own lives. To that end, students will learn about multiple aspects of intellectual conflict: psychological aspects of conflict that stand in the way of conscientious dialogue, questions about rhetoric and its role in manipulation, facing and working with our own cognitive limitations, and structuring debate and dialogue in a way that should help us make progress without simply compromising for the sake of peace. They will also practice and witness intellectual disagreements as they debate their fellow students and observe others engage in intellectual disagreement. In virtue of the complexity of the social phenomenon that is intellectual disagreement, students will be exposed to readings in multiple disciplines. Those include the disciplines of economics, statistics, history, feminist ethics, psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, biology, and theology (see schedule for details). Assignments include short argumentative essays, reports on observed conflicts, and practicing and evaluating in-class debates.
3000-Level Courses
PHH 3100 Ancient Philosophy — N. Rothschild
This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the main ideas of the thinkers who stand at the beginning of the western philosophical tradition: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophers of the Hellenistic era. To give a sense of the topics that will be explored, here are two examples of issues that have been taken up in the course’s previous incarnations. Plato famously presents knowledge as a daunting achievement and claims that a life organized around the pursuit of knowledge, i.e., philosophy, is the best life for a human being. Understanding these views depends on what Plato means by knowledge. This course examines Plato’s developing conception of knowledge and its objects (the things known) and the way in which this epistemology and metaphysics entails the view that happiness is a form of love. In contemporary philosophy, Aristotle is probably best known as the inspiration for the ethical theory known as virtue ethics. This course offers an introduction to Aristotle’s ethics that seeks to contextualize it within Aristotle’s metaphysics of activity and account of life. Like Plato, Aristotle believes that to be a “good person” is to be a good human being. Thus, he thinks that figuring out how we should live (ethics), depends on understanding that our way of being is a form of constantly active animal life (metaphysics and biology).
PHI 3130 Symbolic Logic — Dr. R. Borges
This course will familiarize students with the syntax, semantics, and some of the metalogical results of first-order propositional and predicate logic. If time permits, we will also look at extensions of those first-order logics (e.g., modal logic), and differences between formal logic and human reasoning.
PHM 3202 Political Philosophy — Dr. J. Ahlberg
What is the aim of social justice, and what do we owe to one another as members of a shared social and political community? The purpose of this course is to introduce students to contemporary responses to this central and difficult question. In the first part of the course we will read John Rawls’s restatement of his influential theory of justice as fairness, and proceed by looking at a series of alternative views: the capabilities approach, libertarianism, communitarianism, and a liberal group rights approach. The course will then explore some particular challenges to thinking about ideal justice, including the unique issues raised by race, gender, disability, and the family. Students can expect several short writing assignments throughout the semester, as well as take-home essays. Participation in class discussion will be integral to students’ success in the class, and attendance will be required.
PHH 3400 Modern Philosophy — Dr. J. Biro
The goal of this course is to familiarize you with the central doctrines of the most important philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We will read and discuss works (or parts thereof) by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. All these are widely available, and any translation or edition will do for our purposes. (Two volumes that contain all that we will cover — and more besides — are R. Cummins and D. Owens (eds.), Central Readings in Modern Philosophy and S. Cahn (ed.), Classics of Western Philosophy. Both are easily found on the internet.) There will be two examinations, a mid-term and the final. In addition, you may submit a paper. If you do, your grade in the course will be based on the best two earned.
PHI 3420 Philosophy of the Social Sciences — Dr. J. Rick
Ours is an age in which, for the right price, almost anything can be bought and sold. It is an age where the mechanism of the Market reigns supreme in organizing the production and distribution of nearly everything we might value (and, indeed, also much of what we don’t). Ours is not merely a market economy but a market society: The principles of market exchange increasingly govern more and more of our social life, well beyond even the buying and selling of material goods. Living in a market society, like any society, has its benefits and burdens. The aim of this course is to interrogate the value of living life on the open market. These will be our governing, guiding questions: What exactly is a market, and what are the moral underpinnings, moral successes, and moral limitations of markets? While markets are extremely effective at telling us how much things cost, do they help or hinder us in determining how much things are worth? In responding to these guiding questions, we will examine various topics in Social Philosophy — and the Social Sciences, more broadly – which reside at the intersection of Politics, Ethics, and Economics. Potential topics include the moral psychology of human motivation; the division of labor; the exploitation of labor; the moral standing of corporate entities, laissez-faireism vs. regulation; democratic institutions and the marketplace; and the infiltration of markets into areas of our life, which we might have presumed were not for sale. Our readings will include both historical and contemporary sources.
PHI 3500 Metaphysics — Dr. J. Biro
We will be exploring some long-debated questions about the individuation and identity conditions of ordinary material objects: what makes one the object it is, distinct from others, and what makes it the same object over time. Our discussions will be based on recent writings on these topics, which will be made available in a course-pack.
PHI 3553 The Self, Reason, and Ethics — Dr. A. Pismenny
This course is a course in Moral Psychology, which is a field of study in both philosophy and psychology. In it people study phenomena that are both psychological and ethical in nature—such as altruism and egoism, moral judgment, praise and blame, moral responsibility, practical deliberation, intentional action, virtue and vice, character, moral development, and so on. To explain these things, the moral psychologist must answer a number of particularly difficult questions about the nature of our actions and the way we do and should evaluate them. To do so, we will draw on research in social, cognitive and developmental psychology, as well as philosophy.
PHI 3641 Ethics and Innovation — Dr. E. Palmer
This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the ethical issues surrounding innovation as well as some of the psychological obstacles to acting ethically. We will discuss several innovations in fields such as bioengineering and Artificial Intelligence, focusing on the ethical issues and how best to resolve them. Finally, we will consider how psychological factors inhibit ethical behavior, with an eye towards identifying strategies to combat them.
This course provides 2000 words of credit towards the UF Writing Requirement, satisfies the Ethics requirement for the Innovation minor, and satisfies the State Core General Education requirement for Humanities.
PHI 3650 Moral Philosophy — Dr. J. Rothschild
This course is an introduction to some of the foundational issues and influential theories in Western moral philosophy. We will concentrate most of our efforts on a few ethical theories: utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and Aristotle’s virtue ethics. The main goal of our engagement with these few is to understand what resources the theories have to help us describe and assess what is good in human motivations, actions, activities, and even complete human beings and human lives. We will also attend to some of the framing issues of moral theory, such as the potential for objectivity of some sort in moral thinking, the extent to which moral theory is relevant t0 everyday living, and the potential for things beyond our control to limit our possibilities for doing and being good.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — Dr. D. Purves
This course offers an introduction to ethical issues in data science and data driven technology. Theoretical discussions of ethics are paired with concrete issues emerging from the use of data driven technologies to make real-world decisions. Discussion topics include racial bias in machine learning, the black box problem for machine learning, mass surveillance and privacy, technological unemployment, and moral responsibility for autonomous weapons systems.
PHI 3693 Ethics of Communication — Dr. T. Auxter
In this course we will cover themes and topics in philosophical discussions of the ethics of communication. We will read both classical and contemporary texts in the European, African, and Latin American traditions.
Topics:
- Across cultures, languages, geographies, and histories, what counts as communication? What is the significance of dialogue?
- What are the limits of the universe of discourse?
- What are the parameters and minimum conditions of meaningful communication?
- Do souls communicate with souls across the boundaries of life and death?
- Is communication only human to human? Animal to animal?
- How do answers to these questions affect choices we make about the possibilities for interaction and the development of relations?
- What values are at stake? How are choices defined?
This course counts toward the Humanities (H) general education requirement. A minimum grade of C is required for general education credit. Requirements: There will be a midterm essay exam and two essays written in a final examination.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, & Technology — Dr. D. Grant
In this course, we will explore questions about how emerging technologies should be designed and regulated. What does it mean to say that an algorithm is “biased” against members of a particular social group? Should we be concerned about the fact that technology companies such as Google and Facebook gather vast amounts of data about our online activities? What does it mean to say that a machine learning algorithm is a “black box,” and is there something unfair about using such algorithms to decide how to treat people? As we investigate these and other questions about emerging technologies, we will draw on concepts and readings from a variety of different fields, including philosophy, computer science, economics, law, and public policy.
PHI 3700 Philosophy of Religion — Dr. D. Gene Witmer
The philosophy of religion can range over many different areas, including issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Instead of a broad survey, however, in this course we focus on what is arguably the most fundamental question in this area, namely, whether or not there exists something deserving of the title “God.” The course is structured around a fictional dialogue between a theist, an atheist, and an agnostic as well as supplementary papers (from a coursepack) that expand on parts of the dialogue. Topics include the relationship between God, value and morality; arguments from design (teleological arguments), including both classical biological and more contemporary “fine-tuning” arguments; cosmological or “first cause” arguments; the infamous ontological argument (which aims to show just from the definition of God that he must exist); the significance of religious experience and claims about miracles; the problem of evil as a reason to be an atheist; the idea that we might ”bet” on God’s existence as per Pascal’s Wager; and the nature of faith. By the end of the course you should have a substantial understanding of the most important lines of argument concerning the existence of God.
Requirements include two argumentative papers, unannounced short tests scattered throughout the semester, and regular writing exercises. Students in this course will have an opportunity to “test drive” an application on the website that makes use of peer assessment of written work (using the writing exercises); participation requires a modest fee ($24) and will be optional.
There are two required texts. The first is The God Dialogues by Torin Alter and Robert J. Howell (Oxford University Press, 2011) which will be available at the UF bookstore. The second is a customized coursepack edited by myself and published by Cognella. This must be purchased online from them at https://store.cognella.com/. Both print and electronic versions will be available.
PHP 3786 Existentialism — Dr. T. Auxter
In this course we will examine the philosophical themes and concepts of existentialism in context — including historical, geographical, cultural, religious, social, and political contexts. The goal is to evaluate contributions to philosophical debates about reality, knowledge, personal identity, sensibilities, consciousness, values, and commitment. We will read both classical and contemporary texts.
Topics: What is existentialism? Who are the first existentialists? What are the historical conditions that give rise to existentialism as a movement or school of thought? Who are the major existentialist thinkers receiving the attention of the literary world? Of the philosophical world? What are the main themes and approaches? How do existentialist ideas change traditional conceptions of the relationship between reason and faith? How are existentialist themes developed in European texts? In African and Latin American texts? How are existentialist values related to traditional Western values? What are the traditional Western roles for women? How do existentialists challenge this? How are gender differences regarded in each type of view? How are people who were previously colonized regarded in the traditional Western approach? How do existentialists connect issues about oppression with issues about freedom? How does existentialism change as it moves across national boundaries? How does existentialism change with time?
Requirements: There will be a midterm essay test and two essays written in a final examination. Each of the essays will count as one third of the grade. Students are expected to attend class.
PHI 3930 Special Topics: African Philosophy — Dr. T. Auxter
In this course we will read important works in recent African philosophy. We will also discuss some of the most controversial issues addressed by African philosophers.
African philosophers to be studied include Steve Biko, Cheikh Anta Diop, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Gyekye, Paget Henry, Tsenay Serequeberhan, and Kwasi Wiredu. Why have the issues raised by African philosophers been all but invisible in Western discussions of significant philosophical questions? How is this phenomenon to be explained?
How do Eurocentric accounts of the history of philosophy frame categories of interpretation that rule out, or at least skew, identification of the problems Africans urgently need to have addressed?
How do conceptions of moral ideals framed by African philosophers change formulations of what it is to be human and what values are important?
If we recognize the dimensions of the problem resulting from the Atlantic slave trade, what would it take to pursue social and economic justice today?
If we recognize dimensions of the problem resulting from cultural genocide during colonization, what policies can we adopt today to address this issue?
How do values and priorities that are identified and advocated by African philosophers help shape and define choices for how to set policies today?
Requirements: There will be a midterm essay examination and two essays written in a final examination.
PHI 3930 Special Topics: Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics — Dr. C. Dorst
Quantum mechanics provides us with a spectacularly successful recipe for making predictions about the outcomes of a wide variety of physical experiments. While the intricacies of this recipe are well understood, the implications of its success for the nature of physical reality are not. What must the world be like such that the quantum recipe generates such accurate and reliable predictions of it? To answer this question is to provide an “interpretation” of quantum mechanics, and it will be our central concern in this course. We will begin by examining the basics of quantum mechanics, with an emphasis on its general structure as opposed to the mathematical details. Then we will explore its possible ontological implications, examining interpretations such as spontaneous collapse theories, the Many Worlds Interpretation, and Bohmian Mechanics. No prior background in physics is required, though students should be willing to engage with a modicum of formalism.
PHI 3930 Special Topics: Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence — Dr. D. Grant
In this course, we will explore fundamental questions about the nature, possibility, and consequences of artificial intelligence. What is intelligence, and could a computer be intelligent in the same way you and I are intelligent? What about consciousness—could something made out of computer chips know what it is like to see the color red, or hear beautiful music? How is artificial intelligence currently shaping the world we live in, and what ethical challenges does that raise? Should we fear the “singularity”—the rapid emergence of superintelligent machines whose capabilities far exceed our own? As we discuss these questions, we will engage with both classic and contemporary readings in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
4000-Level Courses
PHH 4141 Seminar in Ancient Philosophy: Socrates and the Stoics — Dr. J. Palmer
Socrates is at once the patron saint of philosophy, an historical figure and a mythic character, a propounder of profound paradoxes, and an inspiring example of what it means to live the philosophical life. His unflinching commitment to rational inquiry and interrogation of the traditional values of his society made him the most popular intellectual of his day and yet ultimately led to his prosecution and execution by the citizens of the world’s first democratic state. His commitment to pursuing philosophical questions in direct one-on-one conversations was such that he wrote no works of philosophy. As a result, all our knowledge of Socrates comes from the works of authors who undertook to provide a portrait of his character and activity. Socrates was fortunate that one of his portraitists – his pupil Plato – was also one of the greatest philosophers and writers ever to live. This course will begin by exploring the problem of our knowledge of the historical Socrates by comparing the portraits of Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds, in Xenophon’s Recollections of Socrates and Apology of Socrates, in Plato’s own Apology of Socrates, and in certain of Plato’s so-called ‘Socratic’ dialogues. These initial weeks will lay the foundation for our efforts to develop a general understanding of the ethical philosophy of Plato’s Socrates as presented in several of Plato’s earlier dialogues as well as in the Euthydemus, Meno, and Gorgias. The final phase of the course will explore the profound influence Socrates’ thought had on Stoic ethics both via the medium of Plato’s dialogues and via other conduits such as the Cynicism of Diogenes of Sinope.
PHH 4664 Continental Philosophy — N. Rothschild
A study of selected works by 19th and 20th century continental philosophers. Specifically, this course will read texts by Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Foucault. These texts will be used to call into question the view that the solitary individual is the ground of human thought and action. Taken together the course materials challenge the target understanding of the subject along three axes. One, they deny that the single individual is a unified whole. Instead they contend there are sub-personal sources of action and that the unity of the individual subject is, if possible, an achievement. Second, these texts argue that human thought and action is possible only insofar as it is located within a wider context of intelligibility such as that provided by a particular social structure or form of life. Finally, these texts argue that the subject is historically constituted due to the dependence of subjectivity on shared practices. What it is to be a subject is determined by how we understand ourselves, and how we understand ourselves determines, and is determined by, shared practices that can and do change.
PHI 4930 Seminar in Morality & Politics — Dr. J. Ahlberg
What is the relationship between morality and politics? Some have argued that the two are fundamentally different enterprises. On such views, politics operates in the actual world, which is hopelessly morally messy, while morality is confined to a domain of utopian thinking. Thus, while morality is about the good and the right, politics appropriately takes as its subjects power and influence, and whatever means necessary to pursue them. Others have argued that political actors and policy must be informed and constrained by the dictates of morality. On this line of thinking, political leaders should strive to be good and do right by their citizens first and foremost. Similarly, members of the polity should strive to embody civic virtues (e.g. honesty, cooperativeness, civility, respectfulness) and policy should be structured to enable a robust and good citizenry and respectful international relations. In this seminar we will explore a variety of philosophical approaches to understanding these and hybrid positions, focusing on the themes of political leadership, citizenship, and policy. Students can expect a mix of historical and contemporary readings.
PHI 4930 A Priori Knowledge — Dr. D. Gene Witmer
Is it possible to know something without relying on experience? It appears so: candidates for such a priori knowledge can be found in logic, mathematics, ethics, and philosophy generally. Such knowledge is, however, rather mysterious. If you know something, it seems it cannot be an accident that you got things right; shouldn’t there be some kind of connection between you and the facts that make the belief correct? Without experience, however, it is not clear what connection there could be that would fit the bill.
This is an exploratory special topics course on some key questions about a priori knowledge. We will consider just how to understand the category of a priori knowledge, arguments for thinking it is not possible, traditional and contemporary attempts to explain its possibility, questions about whether we can do without a priori knowledge, and questions about how extensive such knowledge might be. Our starting point will be Laurence BonJour’s seminal study In Defense of Pure Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1998), followed by a variety of readings that will in part be determined by student interests as we go along. Requirements include frequent writing exercises used in class discussion, a presentation, and a final paper of significant length (2500-3500 words). Classes will be conducted as a seminar where every student is expected to be ready to contribute in every class session. Students with a background in and/or special interest in epistemology, metaphysics, or philosophy of language are encouraged to sign up.