The following descriptions of courses being offered by the Philosophy Department in Spring 2025 were submitted by the course instructors (with the exception of bracketed descriptions “[ ]” which are from the course catalog). Specific information regarding the dates, times, and locations of these courses may be found in the Registrar’s official Schedule of Courses for Spring 2025.
1000-Level Courses
IDS 1114 Ethics and the Public Sphere — J. Ahlberg
Contemporary public discourse is teeming with issues of urgent moral concern. From the #metoo campaign and associated conversations about sexual violence to free speech on campus, and the growing imperatives to respond to economic inequality, we are faced with complex challenges that have ethical problems at their core. It is not always easy, however, to think through these challenges in a responsible and productive way. So, how is one to begin?
This interdisciplinary Quest 1 course explores the how the methods and traditions in the humanities provide resources for approaching publicly relevant ethical issues. The topics we will address include freedom of speech on campus, economic inequality, and sex and gender justice. Philosophical and legal arguments, laws, papal encyclicals, pastoral letters, historical analyses, and news articles will be incorporated into our course readings. The crucial skills we will emphasize throughout the class include identifying the moral dimensions of legal, political, and economic problems; critically evaluating traditions and perspectives; appreciating the diversity of perspectives on these controversial issues; thinking beyond one’s own interests; and approaching disagreement with open-mindedness and a willingness to be rationally persuaded. The class is thus for students from any major who want to explore public moral challenges in rigorous, creative ways. Assignments will include short writings on the ethical topics listed above, and a capstone project in which students address an ethical, public issue of importance to them.
IDS 1114 Ethics and the Public Sphere — A. Pismenny
In today’s world, public discourse is filled with complex moral challenges, from debates over free speech and crime to urgent concerns about addiction and climate change. This interdisciplinary Quest 1 course explores how methods and traditions in the humanities can help us critically engage with these ethical issues. Through philosophical texts, historical analyses, and contemporary news articles, students will delve into the moral dimensions of public concerns.
Topics covered include the foundations of ethical reasoning, the limits of free speech in a democratic society, punishment and criminal justice, the ethics of addiction and personal responsibility, and the moral implications of climate change. Throughout the course, students will develop crucial skills in identifying ethical problems, evaluating diverse perspectives, engaging in reasoned debate, and thinking beyond their own interests.
2000-Level Courses
IDS 2935 AI, Philosophy, and Society — A. Ross
As we begin to rely on AI in many—or all—facets of human life, is anything valuable lost? How AI is changing society, and how should we, as citizens, respond? Is AI-generated content “just as good” as content produced by humans? Is there any difference between AI-generated content and ideas generated by human thought? Does AI understand the prompts you give it? Does ChatGPT mean what it writes in response? In this course we will explore philosophical ideas that will help us wrap our minds around—and potentially answer—these and other AI-related questions.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — B. Beddor
This course will introduce students to some of the major questions in philosophy. Topics include:
- Can we use philosophical arguments to prove or disprove the existence of God?
- How can we know anything about the world around us? Can we rule out the possibility that we are currently dreaming, or that we are caught in a computer simulation (as in The Matrix)?
- We often take for granted that have free will. But what is free will, exactly? Is it
compatible with the idea that all our actions are determined by physical processes? - Will you be the same person in twenty years’ time? Is it possible for you to survive memory loss or death?
- What are our ethical obligations to other people and the world around us?
- What is the meaning of life? (And what does this question even mean?)
While we will be reading many major philosophers’ attempts to tackle these questions, throughout this course the emphasis will be on you: the goal is for each of you to wrestle with these questions and develop what you take to be the most cogent, well-supported answers.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — R. Borges
This course offers an introduction to philosophy through the exploration of timeless questions and key concepts in the discipline. Topics include the existence of God, the nature of the mind, the meaning of “good,” the possibility of free will, and the criteria for truth and knowledge. Each class will involve critical engagement with classical and contemporary readings that illuminate how philosophers have approached these issues across history. The course encourages students to develop their own reasoned positions while honing skills in argument analysis and philosophical reflection.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — L. Grant
Does God exist? Do we have free will? Is eating meat morally wrong? How do you know that you’re not dreaming right now? Could you survive the death of your body?
This course will introduce you to the kinds of questions philosophers think about and the tools they use to answer them. It will also help you develop a variety of useful skills, such as writing clearly and persuasively, constructing and evaluating arguments, and breaking down complex ideas to make them easier to understand. Readings will include both historical and contemporary texts.
The course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement and the Writing (W) requirement (4000 words).
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — M. Robitzsch
This course introduces students to the discipline of philosophy. After an initial discussion of what philosophy is, the course will turn to methods and techniques that are essential for understanding philosophical ideas. The main part of the course will then introduce students to different subdisciplines of philosophy by dealing with select questions philosophers have grappled with. Examples include the following: What is morally right and wrong? How should we live our lives? (Ethics) How do we know that the external world exists? What is knowledge? (Epistemology) Does God exist? Do human beings have a free will? (Metaphysics)
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — J. Wetzel
This course is a general introduction to some of the major questions and methods of the discipline of philosophy. It presumes no background in the discipline. We will be surveying several of the more significant topics in the subfields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Some examples of questions we will be addressing are: What evidence is there for or against the existence of God? How can we be certain that what we take to be the external world actually exists and is at all like what we believe it to be? What can we be said to know and how can we be certain that we actually know it? Is the mind distinct from the brain? What is the self? Do we have free will? What makes an action morally permissible or impermissible? Throughout the course, there will be a heavy emphasis on learning to discuss and write about philosophical issues, so in-class discussion will be an important component, both of student learning and of the grade. Given the centrality of discussion, reading, and writing to the discipline of philosophy in general and this course in particular, a certain amount of class time will be dedicated to learning how to both read and write philosophical works effectively.
Introduction to Philosophy is a Humanities subject area course within the UF General Education Program and also a UF Writing Requirement (WR4) course. A minimum grade of “C” is required for credit toward the Philosophy major or minor, as well as for general education credit.
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues — J. Rick
Do non-human animals have moral standing, comparable to that of human beings? Is abortion ever morally permissible? Are affirmative action policies morally justified or morally bankrupt? What is the most ethically justified immigration policy – one of largely open or largely closed borders? Given the persistence of vast global poverty in our world, what moral duties do those of us in wealthy nations have to persons in impoverished states? Should private gun ownership be morally permissible or impermissible? Is climate change a significant issue for individual morality? Are individuals morally responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions, despite the fact that individual actions seem to make little difference to climate change? Is the death penalty morally justified, or not?
These are examples of moral questions about which many of us have strong and often opposing opinions. And, just as we disagree on many of these issues, so do many philosophers, political theorists, and economists. In this course, we examine opposing philosophical arguments and points of view on these urgent moral questions. The governing aim of our course will be to come to grips with and critically reflect on the underlying justifications for the various sides of these different debates.
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues — J. Wetzel
This course serves as an introduction to philosophical thinking in ethical or moral matters as applied to topics of significant concern to the contemporary world. We will begin with a brief study of three of the major ethical systems (consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics) in order to gain an idea of the various ways in which philosophers have thought it wise to evaluate ethical concerns in general. Once we have a grasp of plausible ways to evaluate moral issues, we will apply this understanding to several of the moral dilemmas with which we find ourselves faced in the modern world. These will include the ethics of reward and punishment for our actions, the ethics of abortion, the ethics of charitable giving, questions regarding the moral status of animals, theories regarding the things about which we ought to care and how we ought to live our lives in light thereof, and theories of friendship—both what it is and how we ought to think of and treat our friends.
Contemporary Moral Issues is a Humanities subject area course within the UF General Education Program and also a UF Writing Requirement (WR4) course. A minimum grade of “C” is required for credit toward the Philosophy major or minor, as well as for general education credit.
3000-Level Courses
PHH 3100 Ancient Greek 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, 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).
PHH 3400 Modern Philosophy — C. Goldhaber
The early modern era was an exciting time in the history of European thought. Sudden developments in the natural sciences overturned ancient theories of nature and our place in it, calling for radically new approaches. The intellectual atmosphere was full of optimism about rejecting authority and prejudice, and about thinking through things for oneself. Carried by this enthusiasm, philosophers developed novel and competing theories about the nature of mind, matter, morals, and much more. They did so in systematic ways, helping to reveal important links between philosophy’s many topics.
This course introduces you to the history of early modern European philosophy, focusing especially, though not exclusively, on four philosophers from that era: René Descartes, Mary Astell, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. The selection of readings balances exposure to the traditional philosophical canon with a new narratives approach, highlighting underrepresented women philosophers and topics in social and practical philosophy. Through interpretation of historical texts, you will develop your writing and argumentative skills, as well as form and defend views on central philosophical topics.
PHH 3610 Happiness and Well-Being — L. Grant
What makes our lives go better or worse? According to some philosophers, our lives go better when we experience pleasure and avoid pain. According to others, our lives go better when we get what we want. Still others say that a variety of different goods – such as pleasure, friendship, and knowledge – are essential components of a life worth living.
In this course, we will consider these and other theories of the nature of wellbeing in the context of broader philosophical questions about life, death, and the afterlife. These questions will include:
- Is it always good to get what you want?
- Is achievement necessary in a life well-lived?
- Is death always bad? For whom?
- Can things that happen after we die make our lives go worse?
- Should we want to live forever?
The main aim of this course is to have you think about these and related questions in a philosophically rigorous way. This means formulating arguments, articulating opposing views, and above all, thinking critically.
PHI 3130 Symbolic Logic — G. Ray
The course is designed to provide the student with a basic working knowledge of first-order logic and semantics, and familiarize him or her with some basic metalogical results. We will cover basic topics in elementary logic including: propositional, quantificational, identity, free, and modal logics, formal semantics, soundness and completeness. We will also formulate the philosophical underpinnings of our subject with special care.
The learning goals for PHI 3130 are broadly spelled out in the relevant section of the Undergraduate Catalog <catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/liberalarts/alc/philosophy.aspx>.
More broadly, in terms of its general educational import: logic — a study and a practice that grew out of ancient philosophy — isolates and systematizes an essential methodology at work in all theoretical disciplines, including philosophy itself, and uncovers a central core of what it is to reason well. The skills of analysis and deduction learned in this course are fundamental to all science and systematic human endeavors generally, and to any pursuit which involves reasoning in any substantial way.
PHI 3300 Theory of Knowledge — B. Beddor
Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemologists want to know what knowledge is, how we acquire it, and how we should respond to arguments for philosophical skepticism, according to which there is very little that we know. We’ll read major attempts to engage with these issues. Along the way, we’ll also discuss related topics having to do with justification, rationality, and the reliability of human reason.
PHI 3420 Philosophy of Social Science — D. Grant
In this course, we will consider core questions in the philosophy of social science, with an emphasis on the explanation of social facts. How should go about explaining social facts, such as the fact that the crime rate is lower in Canada than in the United States? Can we explain such facts entirely by appeal to facts about individuals—such as what they believe and want—or do we need to appeal to facts about social structures as well? What are social structures, anyway? What does it mean to say that a scientific theory is “objective,” and are explanations in the social sciences “objective” in that sense? In exploring these questions, we will engage closely with both recent and classic work in the philosophy of social science.
This course provides General Education Humanities credit. As a General Education Humanities course, it familiarizes students with theories and methodologies from the social sciences (as seen through the lens of work in the philosophy of social science), and equips them to identify and evaluate philosophical assumptions underlying those theories and methodologies.
PHI 3500 Metaphysics — A. Ross
Metaphysics is the study of the fundamental nature of reality. This course will cover several core topics in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Topics we will likely cover (and the main questions associated with them) are:
- The Mind/Body Problem: Persons seem to consist of both minds and bodies, but what is the relation between these? Bodies are paradigmatic physical objects, and if any non-physical entities exist, thoughts and mental states are top contenders. But our minds certainly seem to control our bodily actions; how could a non-physical entity interact with the physical world? Or might minds be physical, despite first appearances?
- Identity; Type and Token: There are many relations that can hold between multiple individuals, and many ways that several individuals can be “the same” in some sense. But there is a special relation, self-identity, that an individuals only holds towards itself and nothing else. Understanding the difference between this kind of identity relation and other kinds of “sameness” is key to understanding a host of puzzling philosophical problems.
- Time (& a bit of Space): What is time, exactly? Is time real? Is it an objective sort of thing? How is time related to space? Is time travel theoretically possible (is it physically possible)?
- Personal Identity: How is it that one person remains the same person throughout enormous changes in their lifetime? How do other, ordinary things, persist through change? Does anything really persist through change? Is there any such thing as the self at all, or is it just a very robust illusion?
PHI 3641 Ethics and Innovation — J. Simpson
This course is designed to familiarize students with ethics and some of the ethical issues surrounding innovation. We will discuss ethical concerns arising from innovations in data science, modern warfare, and the food industry. We will also discuss the main theories in meta-ethics and normative ethics. Discussion topics include, inter alia, racial bias in machine learning, the black box problem for machine learning, the attention economy, the ethics of eating factory-farmed meat, technological unemployment, and moral responsibility for autonomous weapons systems.
PHI 3650 Moral Philosophy — M. Gardner
What do morally wrong actions have in common? What do right and wrong have to do with things that are good and bad? In this course we will explore normative ethics, the branch of philosophy that attempts to systematize and explain our moral judgments. The major theories we will consider include ethical egoism, utilitarianism, Kantianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. We will also briefly study some problems in metaethics, the field that considers what morality really is and whether moral knowledge is possible; and applied ethics, the field that considers specific moral issues.
This course satisfies one of the area distribution requirements for either the philosophy major or the philosophy minor, and it counts toward the Humanities (H) general education requirement.
PHI 3650 Moral Philosophy — A. Pismenny
This course provides an introduction to meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. It may include some of the following questions:
- Where does morality come from?
- What do we do when we make a moral judgment?
- What should morality be like?
- What does morality do for us?
- Why should we be moral?
In attempting to answer these questions, we will examine and scrutinize various views, theories, and arguments. We will examine Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics, Social Contract Theory, Virtue Ethics, as well as Feminist Ethics and Ethics of Care. We will work with historical as well as contemporary texts and look at the ways in which they do and do not provide systematic procedures for answering questions about right and wrong. In addition, we will discuss a variety of specific moral issues to flesh out some of the issue pertaining to these theories.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data and Technology — C. Buckner
This course exposes students to important interactions between ethics, contemporary data science, and emerging social issues. Students will grapple with foundational concepts in ethics and data science. The course begins with a brief introduction to ethical issues in data science. The course then pairs theoretical discussions of ethics with concrete issues in emerging technologies. Discussion topics include bias in machine learning, the black box problem for machine learning and interpretability methods designed to confront it, machine learning and privacy, concerns about the reproducibility of machine learning research methods, human work assisted or replaced by AI, copyright and computational creativity in generative AI, principles and strategies for AI regulation and policy, and moral responsibility for autonomous artificial agents.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data and Technology — M. Gardner
In this course we will use philosophical methodology to understand various ethical issues at the intersection of technology studies and data science. Some of those issues include the reliance on artificial intelligence to make policing and sentencing decisions in the criminal justice system; mass surveillance and privacy; technological unemployment; and the use of autonomous weapons in war.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data and Technology — 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 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, economics, computer science, data science, and law.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — S. Sturm
This course exposes students to important interactions between ethics, contemporary data science, and emerging social issues. Students will grapple with foundational concepts in ethics and data science, pairing theoretical discussions of ethics with concrete issues in emerging data-driven technologies. Discussion topics include racial bias in machine learning, the black box problem for machine learning, mass surveillance and privacy, technological unemployment, and autonomous weapons systems.
4000-Level Courses
PHH 4141 Seminar in Ancient Philosophy — M. Robitzsch
The Hellenistic period in Greek and Roman history is the period spanning from the 3rd century to the 1st century BCE that is characterized by lively philosophical debate, both as a response to and development of views advanced by Aristotle and Plato. This course will survey the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical views held by Epicurean, Stoic, and Skeptic philosophers, that is, of the three major schools of the time, situate these views in their historical context, and evaluate them.
PHI 4930 Seminar on the Philosophy of Cognitive Science — C. Buckner
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind, involving the cooperation of psychology, computer science, philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, and more. In this course, we will review major philosophical and methodological questions that arise in cognitive science, especially regarding how findings from so many different sciences with different methods could fit together in a coherent way. We will discuss how cognitive science began as a response to behaviorism, and cover major questions that it has to confront, including: what counts as a good cognitive explanation, could computers or robots have minds, can our minds extend beyond our brains, are psychological and neural descriptions at odds with one another, and does cognitive science need to appeal to representations? We will review the answers to these questions provided by the major paradigms in the history of cognitive science, including classical computationalism, connectionism, dynamicism, and predictive coding, especially with an eye towards recent achievements in artificial intelligence.
The only formal prerequisite (as with 4000-level philosophy courses generally) is having completed a 3000-level philosophy course, but it is recommended that students have some background in one or more of the following, at least at the introductory level: symbolic logic, psychology, neuroscience, biology, or computer science.
PHI 4930 Seminar on Wittgenstein — C. Dorst
This is an advanced course focusing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially his later work in Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential philosophers of all time, though his work is notoriously challenging to interpret. With that in mind, our main goal will be understanding the text, and its context, as opposed to evaluating it. Along the way, we will address questions in areas such as philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of mathematics. Some such questions include the following:
- What is meaning?
- What is understanding?
- What happens when you understand a word, a sentence, a rule, or a command?
- Do we have infallible, direct access to our own mental states?
- In what sense, if any, are our mental states private?
- What is the relation between a name and the thing it refers to?
- What is the difference between following a rule and merely acting in accord with a rule?
At the end of the course, once we have achieved a general understanding of Wittgenstein’s methodology, we will consider some contemporary applications.
PHH 4930 Seminar on Heidegger — N. Rothschild
This is a course on the 20th Century German philosopher Martin Heidegger. We will read a large portion of Being and Time, Heidegger’s most well known work, as well as some of his shorter writings such as: “The Origin of the Work of Art, “Letter on Humanism,” and “The Question Concerning Technology.” There will be a small selection of secondary material. However, for the most part we will keep to Heidegger’s work, turning to other texts by Heidegger in order to understand Heidegger. Over the course of the semester, we will touch upon a range of topics, among them: the thought that our conception of knowledge—and of things in general—is distorted by a misguidedly theoretical ontology, an account of the subject, of animal life, of the holism of our ways of making sense, and a distinctive attempt to understand human possibilities as historical, and therefore the kind of thing for which we are responsible.