Department of Philosophy

Peter Sprites, Department Head

Location: Baker Hall
www.cmu.edu/dietrich/philosophy

The Department of Philosophy was founded in 1985 and reflects the tradition of philosophy as a central discipline in the humanities. The department has achieved an international reputation through the acclaimed research of its members and its innovative educational programs, not only in traditional topics such as ethics, philosophy of mind, logic, and theory of knowledge, but in such contemporary and applied areas as automated theorem proving, machine learning, the foundations of statistics, causal discovery, forward learning theory, game and decision theory, conflict resolution, and business ethics.

Philosophy thrives through contact with other disciplines. Interdisciplinary work, a traditional strength of the Carnegie Mellon community, is vital to the department and is reflected in the courses we offer, many of which incorporate substantive material from a range of other disciplines. Some courses are actually team-taught with professors from other departments and schools around the university.

Our programs are designed to develop our students' analytical sophistication and their practical and theoretical skills in specializations outside the department (see the sample curricula below). The department welcomes and, indeed, encourages minors and additional majors from other disciplines who are interested in reflecting on the foundation of their own subjects. The department offers three different undergraduate major programs, and jointly sponsors an interdepartmental major: Ethics, History, and Public Policy (with the Department of History):

  • the B.A. or B.S. in Ethics, History, and Public Policy (interdisciplinary major with Department of History)
  • the B.S. in Logic and Computation
  • the B.A. in Philosophy
  • the B.A. in Linguistics

The major in Logic and Computation is perhaps the most non-traditional of the department's majors. It offers students a firm background in computer science, together with a solid grounding in logic, philosophy, and mathematics. This reflects the department's commitment to the use of formal, analytic methods in addressing philosophical issues. A flexible system of electives allows students to focus their efforts in any of a wide range of disciplines, from engineering to the fine arts. As a capstone to the program, students engage in original research in their senior year, and write a thesis under the direction of an advisor.

The department also sponsors six minor programs:

  • the minor in Ethics
  • the minor in Linguistics
  • the minor in Logic and Computation
  • the minor in Philosophy
  • the minor in Rationality, Uncertainty, and Choice: Formal Methods (RUC)
  • the minor in Societal & Human Impacts of Future Technologies (SHIFT)

Finally, the department offers two master's programs directly extending the departmental majors. Both programs are coordinated with and build on the undergraduate programs, so that majors can complete the requirements for the master's degree in one additional year:

  • the M.S. in Logic, Computation and Methodology
  • the M.A. in Philosophy

The Major in Ethics, History, and Public Policy

Professor Steven Schlossman, Director of Ethics, History, and Public Policy, History Department
Location: Baker Hall 236A, 412-268-2880
sls@andrew.cmu.edu

Dr. Alexandra Garnhart-Bushakra, Academic Program Manager, History Department
Location: Baker Hall 240, 412-268-2880
agarnhar@andrew.cmu.edu
https://go.oncehub.com/AlexGarnhartBushakra
 

Patrick Doyle, Academic Program Manager, Philosophy Department
Location: Baker Hall 161G, 412-268-3704
pdoyle2@andrew.cmu.edu
https://go.oncehub.com/PatDoyle
 

The B.A./B.S. in Ethics, History, and Public Policy (EHPP) is an interdepartmental major offered jointly by the Departments of History and Philosophy.

Preparing students to be leaders is a vital goal of colleges and universities in every democratic society. The intellectual challenges facing public and private sector leaders have expanded dramatically since the pioneering EHPP program began in 1996, but the need remains as great as ever for broadly educated, ethically sensitive, and technically skilled leaders.

EHPP prepares students to demonstrate sophistication and flexibility in their command of interdisciplinary knowledge; deep historical understanding of how modern-day policy problems have emerged and evolved; and clear, rational criteria for ethical and socially just decision making. The curriculum provides students with a strong humanistic foundation for developing such high-level, historically grounded, and ethically attuned leadership capacities. It also offers ample room for specialization in a wide range of policy areas in which the History and Philosophy departments have special expertise, e.g., medicine and public health, criminal justice, environment, technology, artificial intelligence (AI), gender, civil rights, immigration, and education.

Curriculum

Students seeking a primary major in Ethics, History, and Public Policy may elect to receive either a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science degree (additional requirements apply; see below). Basic requirements include 120 units encompassing 45 units in History, 45 units in Philosophy, 18 units in Law and Social Science, and a 12-unit EHPP Capstone Course. This program may also be taken as an additional (i.e., second) major.  All courses toward the major must be taken for a letter grade and must be passed with a grade of "C" or better. Students can double count any course for the major with another major or minor, with the exception of Social and Political History, for which a student can double count a maximum of two courses. 

I. Foundation Courses in History and Philosophy18 units

Choose one of the following two courses:

79-189Democracy and History: Thinking Beyond the Self9
79-248U.S. Constitution & the Presidency9

Choose one of the following two courses:

80-130Introduction to Ethics9
80-330Ethical Theory9
II. Ethics and Policy Core36 units

Choose four of the courses below:

No more than one course may be taken at the 100 level and at least one course must be taken at the 300 level or above.

80-135Introduction to Political Philosophy9
80-136Social Structure, Public Policy & Ethics9
80-208Critical Thinking9
80-221Philosophy of Social Science9
80-234Race, Gender, and Justice9
80-244Environmental Ethics9
80-245Medical Ethics9
80-249AI, Society, and Humanity9
80-305Game Theory9
80-306Decision Theory9
80-324Philosophy of Economics9
80-330Ethical Theory9
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9
80-336Philosophy of Law9
80-348Health, Human Rights, and International Development9
80-447Global Justice9
III. History and Policy Core36 units

Choose four of the courses below:

79-175Moneyball Nation: Data in American Life9
79-204American Environmental History9
79-212Jim Crow America9
79-215Environmental Justice from Conservation to Climate Change9
79-234Technology and Society9
79-242African American History: Reconstruction to the Present9
79-248U.S. Constitution & the Presidency9
79-250Voting Rights: An Introduction9
79-278How (Not) to Change the World9
79-300Controversial Topics in the History of American Public Policy9
79-320Women, Politics, and Protest9
79-321Documenting Human Rights9
79-330Medicine and Society: Health, Healers, and Hospitals9
79-343Education, Democracy, and Civil Rights9
79-360Crime, Policing, and the Law: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives9
79-370Technology in the United States9
79-380Hostile Environments: The Politics of Pollution in Global Perspective9
IV. Foundation Courses in Law and Social Science18 units

 Choose two of the courses below:

17-200Ethics and Policy Issues in Computing9
19-101Introduction to Engineering and Public Policy12
70-332Business, Society and Ethics9
73-102Principles of Microeconomics9
73-103Principles of Macroeconomics9
84-104Decision Processes in American Political Institutions9
84-110The Economics of Politics, Policy, and Technology9
84-352Representation and Voting Rights9
84-393Legislative Decision Making: US Congress9
84-402Judicial Politics and Behavior9
88-281Topics in Law: 1st Amendment9
88-284Topics of Law: The Bill of Rights9
EHPP students will also be able to complete the Foundations of Law and Social Science category by participating in the Washington Semester Program. Students are encouraged to pursue additional policy-relevant courses in law and social science, along lines consistent with their career ambitions.
 
V. EHPP Capstone Course12 units

In Fall semester of senior year, EHPP students will participate in an interdisciplinary capstone course that asks students to integrate their studies in Ethics and History by addressing a policy topic of contemporary national urgency (e.g., climate change, immigration, infrastructure, abortion, hate speech, reparations, law enforcement and policing, charter schools, affirmative action, vaccination, taxation, voting rights, global justice). The Departments of History and Philosophy will alternate teaching the EHPP Capstone Course. 

79-449EHPP Capstone Course
[cross-listed]
12
80-449EHPP Capstone Course
[cross-listed]
12
VI. Bachelor of Science Option

Students may elect to earn a Bachelor of Science rather than a Bachelor of Arts degree by completing two courses from the list below, or by petitioning the Director of EHPP to accept equivalent courses as substitutions.

21-257Models and Methods for Optimization9
36-202Methods for Statistics & Data Science9
or 70-208 Regression Analysis
36-303Sampling, Survey and Society9
36-309Experimental Design for Behavioral & Social Sciences9
70-257Optimization for Business9
80-305Game Theory9
80-306Decision Theory9
88-221Markets, Democracy, and Public Policy9
88-223Decision Analysis12
88-251Empirical Research Methods9
88-300Programming and Data Analysis for Social Scientists9

Additional Major

The B.A./B.S. in Ethics, History, and Public Policy may be scheduled as an additional major in consultation with the Director of Ethics, History, and Public Policy.

Ethics, History, and Public Policy Sample Curriculum

Third-YearFourth-Year
FallSpringFallSpring
Foundations Course in History Foundations Course in Law and Social SciencesEHPP Capstone CourseEthics and Policy Core Course
Foundations Course in PhilosophyFoundations Course in Law and Social SciencesEthics and Policy Core CourseHistory and Policy Core Course
Ethics and Policy Core CourseEthics and Policy Core CourseHistory and Policy Core CourseThird Course (open)
History and Policy Core CourseHistory and Policy Core CourseFourth Course (open)Fourth Course (open)
Fifth Course OpenFifth Course (open)Fifth Course (open)Fifth Course (open)

The above sample program is presented as a two-year (junior-senior year) plan for completing EHPP major requirements. Its purpose is to show that this program can be completed in as few as two years; not that it must be.

Students may enter the EHPP major, and begin major course requirements, as early as they wish. Students should consult their advisor when planning their program.

The Major in Linguistics

Patrick Doyle, Academic Program Manager 
Location: Baker Hall 161G
pdoyle2@andrew.cmu.edu
https://go.oncehub.com/PatDoyle
 

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. The central goal of the Linguistics Major is to provide students with the analytical skills and linguistic concepts needed to understand language scientifically, whether formally, as researchers, or informally, as participants in daily linguistic interactions. The foundation of the Linguistics Major is a set of rigorous core courses, informed by contemporary approaches to the study of linguistic form and meaning. 

The Core courses cover the principal domains of linguistic analysis: phonetics and phonology, syntax and meaning.

Students then move on to the Extended Core, which includes more advanced courses as well as courses on a wider range of topics, such as intonation and language variation. These courses are supplemented by a wide-ranging set of electives including linguistically relevant courses taught in other departments.

Primary majors complete their course of study with a Senior Thesis, a semester-long research project carried out independently with one-on-one guidance from a member of the linguistics faculty.

Curriculum

The Linguistics primary major requires a total of 12 courses plus a senior thesis. The Linguistics additional major requires a total of 13 courses (senior thesis not required). This includes 2 semesters of sequential language study for all majors. At least three courses (not including specific language courses) must be at the 300-level or higher. All courses counted towards the major must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above. Students may double count any course for the major simultaneously with another major or minor.

Linguistics Core (36 units)

Complete the following requirements.

80-180Nature of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics9
80-282Phonetics and Phonology I9
80-280Linguistic Analysis9
or 80-285 Natural Language Syntax
80-381Meaning in Language9
or 80-383 Language in Use

Extended Core (27 units)

Choose three courses (27 units) from Extended Core and/or additional courses from Linguistics Core.

80-283It Matters How You Say It9
80-286Words and Word Formation: Introduction to Morphology9
80-287Language Variation and Change9
80-288Intonation: The Meaning of Linguistic Tunes9
80-382Phonetics and Phonology II9
80-384Linguistics of Turkic Languages9
80-385Linguistics of Germanic Languages9
80-388Linguistic Typology: Diversity and Universals9
80-488Acoustics of Human Speech: Theory, Data, and Analysis9

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT

Students must successfully complete 2 semesters of foreign language study in a single language (e.g. 100 & 200 level).

Electives

Primary majors choose three additional electives (27 or more units). Additional majors choose four additional electives (36 or more units). Primary majors: see thesis requirement below.

These Electives can be additional courses from the Core or Extended Core courses listed above, the electives list below, or any other course which is approved by the Academic Program Manager as a linguistics elective. Listed below are the additional electives taught on a regular basis. Additional appropriate courses are offered irregularly or on a one-off basis. The Academic Program Manager will provide students with a list of possible electives each semester, and will assist students in selecting electives which are consistent with their goals and interests.

Philosophy
80-484Language and Thought9
English
76-318Communicating in the Global Marketplace9
76-325Intertextuality9
76-385Introduction to Discourse Analysis9
76-386Language & Culture9
76-388Coding for Humanists9
76-389Rhetorical Grammar9
Modern Languages
82-239Crazy Linguistically Rich Asian Languages9
82-304French & Francophone Sociolinguistics9
82-305French in its Social Contexts9
82-334Structure of Chinese9
82-585Topics in Second Language Acquisition9
82-373Structure of the Japanese Language9
82-383Second Language Acquisition: Theories and Research9
82-388Topics in Second Language Acquisition9
Psychology
85-354Infant Language Development9
85-421Language and Thought9
Language Technologies Institute
11-411Natural Language Processing12
11-423ConLanging: Lrng. Ling. & Lang Tech via Constru Artif. Lang.12
11-492Speech Technology for Conversational AI12
11-422Grammar Formalisims12
Note: all 11-xxx courses have significant Computer Science prerequisites. Interested students should check with the course instructor and with the Linguistics Academic Program Manager before registering. 
Statistics and Data Science
36-468Special Topics: Text Analysis9

SENIOR THESIS [PRIMARY MAJORS ONLY]

Primary majors must complete a senior thesis (a workload equivalent to a 12-unit course)  80-595 Senior Thesis. Topics must be approved by an advisor, who will work with the student and guide the thesis project. Students are responsible for identifying their topic and securing their thesis advisor. Students should work with the Academic Program Manager of the major to begin the process of identifying their thesis topic and advisor during the fall of their senior year at the latest. Students will be required to submit a written proposal of their thesis project, signed by their thesis faculty advisor, before the end of the semester preceding that in which the thesis research will be conducted..

Additional Major in Linguistics

The Linguistics additional major requires a total of 13 courses. This includes 2 semesters of language study for all majors. At least three courses (not including specific language courses) must be at the 300-level or higher. Additional majors are not required to write a thesis but must take four electives (36 or more units). All courses counted towards the major must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above. Students may double count any course for the major simultaneously with another major or minor.  If you are interested in obtaining an additional major in Linguistics, please reach out to the Academic Program Manager, Philosophy Department. 

The Major in Logic and Computation

Patrick Doyle, Academic Program Manager 
Location: Baker Hall 161G
pdoyle2@andrew.cmu.edu
https://go.oncehub.com/PatDoyle
 

The Bachelor of Science in Logic and Computation curriculum takes advantage of the preparation provided by the Dietrich College General Education Program in mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and statistics. It is flexible in that it permits students to focus on any of a number of areas including (but not limited to):

  • computer science,
  • artificial intelligence and cognitive science,
  • logic and the foundations of mathematics,
  • methodology and philosophy of science.

Curriculum

The course requirements for the major consist of seven core courses (including the Senior Thesis) and four electives. The core courses provide comprehensive background in logic, computability, and analytic philosophy.  

Students in their first year and sophomore year, are expected to take three courses that provide preparation in computer science, mathematics, and statistics.  Four advanced electives are chosen in the area of focus, as described below in the sample curricula, and should support independent research towards fulfilling the senior thesis requirement. In their senior year, Primary and Additional Majors in Logic and Computation will engage in original research under the supervision of a faculty advisor in 80-595 Senior Thesis (a workload equivalent of 12 units).  Students are responsible for identifying a thesis topic and securing a faculty advisor prior to the start of the semester in which they plan to complete the thesis. Note: Students should work with the Academic Program Manager during their junior year to begin the process of identifying their topic and potential advisors. However, with suitable planning and advice from the Academic Program Manager, it is possible to complete the program in two years, beginning in the junior year.

All courses, if taken at Carnegie Mellon University, must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above. Students may double count any course for the major with another major or minor.

Prerequisites42 units
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
36-200Reasoning with Data9
15-112Fundamentals of Programming and Computer Science12
21-127Concepts of Mathematics12
Logic and Computation Core63 units
80-150Nature of Reason
*Students should complete before their junior year.
9
80-310Formal Logic
*Students should complete before their junior year.
9
80-311Undecidability and Incompleteness9
15-122Principles of Imperative Computation
*Students should complete this prerequisite before their junior year.
12
15-150Principles of Functional Programming
*Students should complete this prerequisite before their junior year.
12
80-595Senior Thesis12
Logic and Computation Electives36 units

Bearing in mind prerequisites, Logic and Computation majors must complete four advanced courses in areas that use logical and computational tools, such as philosophy, computer science, linguistics, mathematical logic, psychology, or statistics. The sequence of courses, mostly at the *300-level and above, must be selected in consultation with the Academic Program Manager.

Sample Curricula

Below are four samples of Logic and Computation curricula (beyond the core courses), each reflecting a different emphasis: Computer Science, Language and Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, and Methodology. 

Sample 1.
A student interested in Computer Science might take the following courses:

80-315Logics for Knowledge and Belief9
80-413Category Theory9
15-312Foundations of Programming Languages12
15-317Constructive Logic9

Sample 2.
A student interested in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science might take the following courses:

80-249AI, Society, and Humanity9
80-315Logics for Knowledge and Belief9
80-325Foundations of Causation and Machine Learning9
80-411Proof Theory9
85-412Cognitive Modeling9

Note: If you are a Cognitive Science major (Department of Psychology) this additional major would complement your coursework. 

Sample 3.
A student interested in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics might consider the following courses:

80-254Analytic Philosophy9
80-312Mathematical Revolutions9
80-411Proof Theory9
80-413Category Theory9

Sample 4.
A student interested in Methodology might consider the following courses:

80-220Philosophy of Science9
80-221Philosophy of Social Science9
36-309Experimental Design for Behavioral & Social Sciences9
80-305Game Theory9

Additional major in Logic and Computation 

The Logic and Computation major is also suitable as an additional major for students in Dietrich College or for students in other colleges within the University. Non-Dietrich students interested in an additional major in Logic and Computation need to take only those courses in the Dietrich College General Education Program that are prerequisites to courses required in the major; all other Dietrich College General Education requirements are waived for these students. Depending on the student's background, the requirements of the additional major in Logic and Computation can be fulfilled with as few as five additional courses. The Philosophy Department does not limit the number of courses that can be counted for other majors and minors around the university. In their senior year, the additional major in Logic and Computation will write a thesis under the supervision of a faculty advisor. 

The M.S. Program in Logic, Computation and methodology 

The Department of Philosophy also offers a graduate M.S. degree in Logic and Computation and Methodology, which culminates with the writing of a master's thesis. It is ordinarily a two-year program, but students in the Logic and Computation major are able to complete the additional requirements in one year. Interested students in the 5th-year Master's program Master of Science in Logic, Computation & Methodology, should contact the Academic Program Manager for more information on how to apply.

The Major in Philosophy

Patrick Doyle, Academic Program Manager
Location: Baker Hall 161G
pdoyle2@andrew.cmu.edu 
https://go.oncehub.com/PatDoyle
 

The Major in Philosophy is intended to be flexible and to facilitate additional majors in other fields (including majors with a strong professional focus). It provides students with a broad humanities education and sharpens their analytical skills. We encourage, but do not require, students to choose a thematic concentration through their electives. Sample curricula emphasizing Law and Social Policy, Philosophy of Science, Ethics and Social Philosophy, and Philosophy of Mind are suggested below. However, alternative emphases can be proposed and approved by the Academic Program Manager. The Major in Philosophy is a B.A. degree.

Curriculum

In addition to the general education requirements for the student's college, Philosophy primary majors and additional majors must complete 80-100 Introduction to Philosophy and nine Philosophy courses in the Areas listed below. The 80-100 Introduction to Philosophy requirement must be fulfilled before the first semester of the junior year. Only two of the remaining nine courses may be at the 100-level, and two of the nine courses must be at the 300-level or higher. All ten courses, if taken at CMU, must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above.  No more than two of the ten courses may be taken at another institution.  Students are to choose one course out of each of the areas 1-4, two courses out of area 5, and may freely select three courses in area 6. Students may double count any course for the major with another major or minor. As per the requirement of Dietrich College, a student's Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar course may not count toward the fulfillment of the major requirements.                                 

Introduction to Philosophy9 units
80-100Introduction to Philosophy9
Area 1: Values and Normative Theory9 units
One of the following:
80-130Introduction to Ethics9
80-135Introduction to Political Philosophy9
80-136Social Structure, Public Policy & Ethics9
80-234Race, Gender, and Justice9
80-244Environmental Ethics9
80-245Medical Ethics9
80-246Moral Psychology9
80-249AI, Society, and Humanity9
80-330Ethical Theory9
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9
80-336Philosophy of Law9
80-348Health, Human Rights, and International Development9
80-447Global Justice9
Area 2: Philosophy of Mind/Language/Metaphysics9 units
One of the following:
80-180Nature of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics9
80-270Problems of Mind and Body: Meaning and Doing9
80-271Mind and Body: The Objective and the Subjective9
80-276Philosophy of Religion9
80-280Linguistic Analysis9
80-282Phonetics and Phonology I9
80-283It Matters How You Say It9
80-285Natural Language Syntax9
80-286Words and Word Formation: Introduction to Morphology9
80-287Language Variation and Change9
80-288Intonation: The Meaning of Linguistic Tunes9
80-381Meaning in Language9
80-382Phonetics and Phonology II9
80-383Language in Use9
80-384Linguistics of Turkic Languages9
80-385Linguistics of Germanic Languages9
80-388Linguistic Typology: Diversity and Universals9
80-484Language and Thought9
80-488Acoustics of Human Speech: Theory, Data, and Analysis9
Area 3: Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics9 units
One of the following:
80-210Logic and Proofs9
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
80-212Arguments and Logical Analysis9
80-310Formal Logic9
80-311Undecidability and Incompleteness9
80-312Mathematical Revolutions9
80-315Logics for Knowledge and Belief9
80-411Proof Theory9
80-413Category Theory9
80-419Interactive Theorem Proving9
80-514Categorical Logic9
Area 4: Epistemology/Methodology9 units
One of the following:
80-150Nature of Reason9
80-201Knowledge and Justified Belief9
80-208Critical Thinking9
80-220Philosophy of Science9
80-221Philosophy of Social Science9
80-226The Nature of Scientific Revolutions9
80-261Experience, Reason, and Truth9
80-305Game Theory After Spring 20239
80-306Decision Theory9
80-324Philosophy of Economics9
80-325Foundations of Causation and Machine Learning9
80-405Game Theory Prior to Fall 20239
80-516Causality and Machine Learning9
80-521Seminar on Formal Epistemology: Belief and Evidence9
80-524Topics in Formal Epistemology: Topological Philosophy of Science9
Area 5: History of Philosophy18 units
Two of the following:
80-150Nature of Reason9
80-226The Nature of Scientific Revolutions9
80-250Ancient Philosophy9
80-251Modern Philosophy9
80-252Kant9
80-253Continental Philosophy9
80-254Analytic Philosophy9
80-551Seminar on History of Philosophy: Smith and Hume9
80-261Experience, Reason, and Truth9
80-350Adam Smith9
80-358Hume9
80-365Ramsey9
Area 6: Elective27 units

Three other philosophy courses, or appropriate courses from other departments, with the permission of the Academic Program Manager.

Sample Curricula

Here are four sample curricula, reflecting different emphases.

1. For an emphasis on Law & Social Policy, a student might take:

Area 1
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9
Area 2
80-180Nature of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics9
Area 3
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
Area 4
80-208Critical Thinking9
Area 5
80-150Nature of Reason9
80-250Ancient Philosophy9
Area 6
80-336Philosophy of Law9
80-348Health, Human Rights, and International Development9
80-447Global Justice9

2. For an emphasis on Philosophy of Science, a student might take:

Area 1
80-136Social Structure, Public Policy & Ethics9
Area 2
80-270Problems of Mind and Body: Meaning and Doing9
Area 3
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
Area 4
80-220Philosophy of Science9
or 80-221 Philosophy of Social Science
Area 5
80-250Ancient Philosophy9
80-226The Nature of Scientific Revolutions9
Area 6
80-150Nature of Reason9
80-221Philosophy of Social Science9
80-524Topics in Formal Epistemology: Topological Philosophy of Science9

3. For an emphasis on Ethics and Social Philosophy, a student might take:

Area 1
80-130Introduction to Ethics9
Area 2
80-276Philosophy of Religion9
Area 3
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
Area 4
80-221Philosophy of Social Science9
Area 5
80-250Ancient Philosophy9
80-251Modern Philosophy9
Area 6
80-330Ethical Theory9
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9
80-348Health, Human Rights, and International Development9

4. For an emphasis on Philosophy of Mind, a student might take:

Area 1
80-130Introduction to Ethics9
Area 2
80-270Problems of Mind and Body: Meaning and Doing9
Area 3
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
Area 4
80-201Knowledge and Justified Belief9
Area 5
80-251Modern Philosophy9
80-252Kant9
Area 6
80-521Seminar on Formal Epistemology: Belief and Evidence9
80-261Experience, Reason, and Truth9
80-271Mind and Body: The Objective and the Subjective9

Additional Major

Students who wish to pursue an additional major in Philosophy must fulfill the same departmental requirements as primary majors in Philosophy. Students can double count any course for the major with another major or minor.

The Master of art in Philosophy

The Philosophy M.A. provides exciting opportunities to pursue postgraduate studies in Philosophy for students with a degree in Philosophy who wish to continue their work in a more focused and advanced way, as well as for students with a degree in another field who wish to add a concentration in Philosophy. Students in this program will develop an understanding of a wide variety of philosophical subfields. The flexible course of study can be tailored to a student's interests and background. Students are expected to complete a Master’s thesis by the end of their second year, though a purely course-based option is also available for students who do not wish to continue in academia.

The course of study for the 5th year M.A. in Philosophy is very flexible, and can be tailored to a student's interests and background. For more information, please contact the Academic Program Manager.

Philosophy Department Minors

The Philosophy Department offers six minors, and the requirements are designed to be flexible and to allow students to tailor courses to their special interests, while providing some breadth.

  • Ethics
  • Linguistics
  • Logic & Computation
  • Philosophy
  • Rationality, Uncertainty, and Choice: Formal Methods (RUC)
  • Societal & Human Impacts of Future Technologies (SHIFT)

The Minor in Ethics

The Minor in Ethics introduces students to central ethical concepts and theories proposed and defended by the great philosophers of the past; it provides an understanding of how these theories and concepts can be applied to practical problems. This background in ethical theory and its applications should help students to respond more sensitively and appropriately to the new and unavoidable ethical problems that technologies, businesses, unions, and branches of government must face.

Ethics minors must complete five philosophy courses in the areas listed below.  All five required courses must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of a "C" or above, except 80-500 Undergraduate Internship, which may be taken pass/fail.

Ethics Core Courses27 units

Complete three courses from any of the following areas with at least two courses at the 200-level or higher.

Units
80-130Introduction to Ethics9
80-135Introduction to Political Philosophy9
80-136Social Structure, Public Policy & Ethics9
80-244Environmental Ethics9
80-245Medical Ethics9
80-246Moral Psychology9
80-249AI, Society, and Humanity9
80-330Ethical Theory9
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9
80-336Philosophy of Law9
80-348Health, Human Rights, and International Development9
80-447Global Justice9
Ethics Electives18 units

Complete two courses at the 200-level or higher.  These courses may be additional courses from Ethics Core list above.  

Units
80-234Race, Gender, and Justice9
80-244Environmental Ethics9
80-245Medical Ethics9
80-246Moral Psychology9
80-330Ethical Theory9
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9
80-336Philosophy of Law9
80-348Health, Human Rights, and International Development9
80-447Global Justice9

The Minor in Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. The central goal of the Linguistics Program is to provide students with the analytical skills and linguistic concepts needed to understand language scientifically, whether formally, as researchers, or informally, as participants in daily linguistic interactions. The foundation of the Linguistics Minor is a set of rigorous core courses, informed by contemporary approaches to the study of linguistic form and meaning. The Core courses cover the principal domains of linguistic analysis: phonetics and phonology, syntax, and meaning. Students then move on to the Extended Core, which includes more advanced courses as well as courses on a wider range of topics, such as intonation and language variation.  All courses counted towards the minor must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above.

Core (27 units)

Required Units
80-180Nature of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics9
Select 2 from the following 3 options Units
80-282Phonetics and Phonology I9
80-280Linguistic Analysis9
or 80-285 Natural Language Syntax
80-381Meaning in Language9
or 80-383 Language in Use

Extended Core: Choose 3 courses (27 units) from the Extended Core and/or additional courses from Core.

Extended Core Units
80-283It Matters How You Say It9
80-286Words and Word Formation: Introduction to Morphology9
80-287Language Variation and Change9
80-288Intonation: The Meaning of Linguistic Tunes9
80-382Phonetics and Phonology II9
80-384Linguistics of Turkic Languages9
80-385Linguistics of Germanic Languages9
80-388Linguistic Typology: Diversity and Universals9
80-488Acoustics of Human Speech: Theory, Data, and Analysis9

The Minor in Logic and Computation

The Minor in Logic and Computation provides students with general course work in logic, the theory of computation, and philosophy. Students must complete six courses, among them the following three core courses. All courses counted towards the minor must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above.

Logic and Computation Core Courses27 units
Units
80-150Nature of Reason9
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
or 80-210 Logic and Proofs
80-310Formal Logic9
or 80-311 Undecidability and Incompleteness
Logic and Computation Electives27 units

Students must take two courses in the Philosophy Department at the 300-level or higher, in subjects related to logic and computation.  And an additional course at the 300-level or higher in an area that uses logical and computational tools, such as philosophy, computer science, linguistics, mathematics, psychology, or statistics. The choice of electives must be approved by the Academic Program Manager.


The Minor in Philosophy

The Minor in Philosophy requires five courses and gives students a broad philosophical foundation, requiring one course in Logic/Methodology, two courses in the History of Philosophy and two Philosophy electives. The minor complements any primary major from around the University. All courses counted towards the minor must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above.

Logic/Methodology Requirements9 units
Complete one course: Units
80-210Logic and Proofs9
80-211Logic and Mathematical Inquiry9
80-220Philosophy of Science9
80-221Philosophy of Social Science9
80-226The Nature of Scientific Revolutions9
80-310Formal Logic9
80-311Undecidability and Incompleteness9
80-312Mathematical Revolutions9
80-315Logics for Knowledge and Belief9
80-324Philosophy of Economics9
80-325Foundations of Causation and Machine Learning9
80-365Ramsey9
80-411Proof Theory9
80-413Category Theory9
80-514Categorical Logic9
80-516Causality and Machine Learning9
80-521Seminar on Formal Epistemology: Belief and Evidence9
History of Philosophy Requirements18 units
Complete two courses: Units
80-150Nature of Reason9
80-226The Nature of Scientific Revolutions9
80-250Ancient Philosophy9
80-251Modern Philosophy9
80-252Kant9
80-253Continental Philosophy9
80-254Analytic Philosophy9
80-261Experience, Reason, and Truth9
80-350Adam Smith9
80-551Seminar on History of Philosophy: Smith and Hume9
80-358Hume9
80-365Ramsey9
Philosophy Electives18 units

Students must complete 18 units in the Philosophy department at the 200-level or higher.  The choice of electives must be approved by the Academic Program Manager.


The Minor in Rationality, Uncertainty, and Choice: Formal Methods (RUC)

Students pursuing the minor in Rationality, Uncertainty, and Choice: Formal Methods (RUC) will learn interdisciplinary philosophical and mathematical approaches to reasoning about uncertainty and decision making in both individual and group contexts.

The RUC minor consists of three core requirements in Game Theory, Decision Theory, and a choice between the Decision Analysis and Decision Models and Games from the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Students will then take 3 elective courses from two elective categories. Electives are intended to show how key concepts from the RUC core can be applied across many disciplines. The RUC minor uniquely complements majors from across Carnegie Mellon University and extends to fields such as economics and computer science. All courses counted towards the minor must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above. 

Core Requirements

Complete all of the following: Units
80-305Game Theory9
80-306Decision Theory9
88-223Decision Analysis12
or 88-312 Decision Models and Games

Note: Students must complete three elective courses from the following two categories and must complete at least one course in each category. 

Elective Category 1: Formal Foundations9-18 units
80-201Knowledge and Justified Belief9
80-208Critical Thinking9
80-210Logic and Proofs9
80-315Logics for Knowledge and Belief9
80-325Foundations of Causation and Machine Learning9
80-516Causality and Machine Learning9
80-521Seminar on Formal Epistemology: Belief and Evidence9
80-524Topics in Formal Epistemology: Topological Philosophy of Science9
88-223Decision Analysis12
88-312Decision Models and Games9
88-379Data-Driven Decision Analysis9
Elective Category 2: Theory and Applications9-18 units
80-246Moral Psychology9
80-249AI, Society, and Humanity9
80-252Kant9
80-255Pragmatism: Making Ideas Work9
80-261Experience, Reason, and Truth9
80-324Philosophy of Economics9
80-330Ethical Theory9
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9

The Minor in Societal & Human Impacts of Future Technologies (SHIFT)

Students pursing the SHIFT minor will gain the skills, knowledge, and experience to successfully take on roles in integrated, multidisciplinary analyses of current and near-future computational technologies. The SHIFT minor requires eight total courses, with no limit to double-counting with other majors or minors.  All courses counted towards the minor must be taken for a letter grade and passed with a grade of "C" or above.

Core Courses (2 courses, 10 to 18 units total) Units
80-249AI, Society, and Humanity9
80-445Shift Capstone Experience1-9

Area Courses (6 courses, 54 units total)
Note: Five of the six Area Courses must be taken in different departments

Technology area (18 units)
Courses that build basic technological competence, and teach concepts and frameworks that provide high-level understanding of computational technologies, including their possibilities and limits.                                                                                                                      

Complete two courses Units
05-317Design of Artificial Intelligence Products12
05-318Human AI Interaction12
05-320Social Web12
05-452Service Design12
15-110Principles of Computing10
15-112Fundamentals of Programming and Computer Science12
16-467Introduction to Human Robot Interaction12
17-303Cryptocurrencies, Blockchains and Applications9
17-313Foundations of Software Engineering12
17-331Information Security, Privacy, and Policy12
17-333Privacy Policy, Law, and Technology9
17-355Program Analysis12
36-202Methods for Statistics & Data Science9
67-250The Information Systems Milieux9
88-300Programming and Data Analysis for Social Scientists9

Social & Behavioral Sciences area (18 units)
Courses that teach the concepts and frameworks of social and behavioral sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, sociology), including methods and analyses such as experimental design and quantitative and qualitative data analysis.                                                                                                             

Complete two courses Units
05-413Human Factors9
17-224Influence, Persuasion, and Manipulation Online9
36-200Reasoning with Data9
70-311Organizational Behavior9
70-321Negotiation and Conflict Resolution9
70-341Team Dynamics and Leadership9
73-102Principles of Microeconomics9
73-103Principles of Macroeconomics9
84-266Research Design for Political Science9
84-267Data Science for Political Science9
84-369Decision Science for International Relations9

Ethics, Policy & Design Area  (18 units) 
Courses that teach core concepts and frameworks to address and analyze ethical, policy, and design challenges relevant to current and near-future computational technologies.           

Complete two courses Units
05-413Human Factors9
08-200Ethics and Policy Issues in Computing9
16-161ROB Seminar: Artificial Intelligence and Humanity9
17-224Influence, Persuasion, and Manipulation Online9
36-200Reasoning with Data9
51-173Human Experience in Design9
51-241How People Work9
51-371Futures I4.5
51-373Futures II4.5
51-382Design Center: Design for Social Innovation9
70-311Organizational Behavior9
70-321Negotiation and Conflict Resolution9
70-332Business, Society and Ethics9
70-341Team Dynamics and Leadership9
70-364Business Law6
73-102Principles of Microeconomics9
73-103Principles of Macroeconomics9
79-175Moneyball Nation: Data in American Life9
79-234Technology and Society9
79-302Killer Robots? The Ethics, Law, and Politics of Drones and A.I. in War9
80-130Introduction to Ethics9
80-135Introduction to Political Philosophy9
80-330Ethical Theory9
80-335Social and Political Philosophy9
84-266Research Design for Political Science9
84-267Data Science for Political Science9
84-275Comparative Politics9
84-319Civil-Military Relations9
84-325Contemporary American Foreign Policy9
84-369Decision Science for International Relations9
84-370Nuclear Security & Arms Control9
84-372Space and National Security9
84-373Emerging Technologies and International Law9
84-380US Grand Strategy9
84-386The Privatization of Force9
84-387Remote Systems and the Cyber Domain in Conflict9
84-389Terrorism and Insurgency9
84-390Social Media, Technology, and Conflict9
84-405The Future of Warfare9
88-221Markets, Democracy, and Public Policy9

Course Descriptions

About Course Numbers:

Each Carnegie Mellon course number begins with a two-digit prefix that designates the department offering the course (i.e., 76-xxx courses are offered by the Department of English). Although each department maintains its own course numbering practices, typically, the first digit after the prefix indicates the class level: xx-1xx courses are freshmen-level, xx-2xx courses are sophomore level, etc. Depending on the department, xx-6xx courses may be either undergraduate senior-level or graduate-level, and xx-7xx courses and higher are graduate-level. Consult the Schedule of Classes each semester for course offerings and for any necessary pre-requisites or co-requisites.


80-100 Introduction to Philosophy
All Semesters: 9 units
Even philosophers have a hard time explaining what exactly philosophy is. Instead of attempting a definition, one might instead list some of the questions philosophers try to answer. Like most other academic fields, philosophy has its own sub-disciplines, and each of these has its own questions it tries to answer. In this course, we will be looking at questions from several of these areas of philosophy, including: What is the mind? Do we have free will? What does the answer to that question mean for practices of reward and punishment? Is morality relative? What, if anything, is its connection to religion? How can I know the right thing to do? How can I know anything? This class isn't a historical introduction to philosophy, and we will be jumping around through history and subjects as we please, concerned only with interesting questions and good answers. As a whole, the course will strongly emphasize some of the basic skills of doing just about any kind of philosophy: how to recognize and understand arguments, how to evaluate them, and how to construct your own. As it turns out, these are skills you need to successfully navigate your way through just about any field of study and any career. This course will include a fair amount of writing, but you'll be getting lots of help from me, from your TA, and even from your peers.
80-101 Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society
Fall and Spring: 9 units
Do cancel culture and "wokeness" stifle free speech on campus? When should campus speakers be protested or disinvited? Should race be considered in college admissions? Should we use genetic engineering to create super-intelligent babies? Under what circumstances, if any, is abortion permissible? When, if ever, can a doctor kill a newborn baby or a dying patient? If we can in the future, should we end human aging, allowing people to live for thousands of years? Does civilian gun ownership make people safer, and if not, should it be allowed anyway? Is the case for defunding the police compelling? Should the United States open its borders to more immigrants? Has neuroscience shown that free will is an illusion? Could a digital computer become sentient? What is the probability that we are living in a computer simulation? Is it rational to believe in God in a world that contains so much suffering? These are some of the toughest, most pressing questions of current social, moral, and philosophical inquiry. Philosophers address them by producing intricate and often beautiful arguments. In this course, you will assess those arguments and produce your own. You will learn how to have challenging, productive, and respectful discussions across political and moral differences. You will learn to think like a philosopher - to strip an argument presented in prose to its essentials and plainly expose its structure. This course will improve the clarity and rigor of your own thinking and writing. It will put you in a position to make progress on hard questions like those mentioned above. And it will improve your ability to crisply convey your ideas - an ability that will serve you well not just in class, but also in daily life.
80-130 Introduction to Ethics
Fall: 9 units
Philosophical ethics, or moral philosophy, covers a lot of ground. It asks and tries to answer questions like: What's good in life? What matters? What should I (and others) do? How should I (and others) act? What kinds of things out there must be treated ethically? Do we have moral duties to (at least some) non-human animals? Is morality subjective? Are there actually any objective moral truths? Morally speaking, what (if anything) is the difference between killing someone, and simply letting them die? In trying to answer these questions (and others), we'll engage in some wonderfully weird thought experiments, class discussions, smaller group discussions, debates, etc. We'll study and critique several moral theories which try to explain and help guide our moral judgments, and we'll try to apply these theories to real-life moral controversies. Past classes covered topics including drug prohibition, abortion, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide. This is an introductory philosophy class, so you'll be learning how to read, critique, do, and write philosophy generally, not just ethics. Considerable time and effort, both in lectures and in recitations, will be spent helping you learn to recognize and evaluate philosophical arguments, as well as empowering you to create, improve, and defend your own arguments in class assignments.
80-135 Introduction to Political Philosophy
Spring: 9 units
At the heart of political philosophy lie fundamental questions such as: What constitutes a just society? How, and under what circumstances do individuals incur political obligations to a particular state? This course provides a systematic investigation of the way such questions are answered by dominant schools of liberal political theory, such as the social contract tradition, utilitarianism and libertarianism. Later we will introduce critiques from socialist, and feminist theorists. Readings are drawn from classic works by authors such as Plato, Hobbes and Locke, and from the works of more contemporary theorists like Rawls, and Nozick.
80-136 Social Structure, Public Policy & Ethics
Intermittent: 9 units
The course will consider ethical questions surrounding social structure and public policy. It will analyze the role of political institutions and individual citizens in dealing with some of the greatest challenges facing our world: Global health crises, the spread of (and threats to) democracy worldwide, and world poverty. Some of the questions we will consider include: Are developed countries obligated to ameliorate poverty by providing foreign aid? What is democratic governance, and what do democratic representatives owe to their constituents? Should wealthy nations and corporations assist in the fight against life-threatening diseases worldwide? The course uses ethical and political theory, case studies, and empirical evidence to consider these questions.
80-150 Nature of Reason
Spring: 9 units
This course provides an accessible introduction to the historical development of philosophical ideas about the nature of reasoning and rationality (with a focus on mathematics and the sciences), from ancient to modern times. The first part of the course traces the search for deductive methods for obtaining certain knowledge, starting with Aristotle and Euclid all the way to the work of Boole and Frege in the 19th century. The second part of the course considers the history of skepticism about empirical knowledge, covering Plato, Descartes, Pascal, and Hume, along with replies to skepticism in the works of Bayes and Kant. The third part of the course discusses theories of the nature of the mind and mental processes, culminating in the computational conception of the mind that underlies contemporary cognitive science.
80-180 Nature of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics
Fall and Spring: 9 units
Language is used to talk about the world or to describe it, but how do we go about describing language itself? Linguistics is the name given to the science of language, whose task it is to give such a description. The discipline of linguistics has developed novel tools for describing and analyzing language over the last two hundred years and in this course we learn what these tools are and practice applying them. Sub-areas of linguistics which we study include phonetics (the study of speech sounds), phonology (the study of sound systems), morphology (the study of parts of words), and syntax (the study of combinations of words). Furthermore, we highlight various respects in which language and linguistics intersects with societal issues. The methods of linguistics are useful in the study of particular languages and in the study of language generally, so this course is useful for students of foreign languages as well as those interested in going on to study language acquisition, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, philosophy of language, and computer modeling of language.
80-201 Knowledge and Justified Belief
Intermittent: 9 units
Knowledge acquisition is central to the university's mission. The sciences seek knowledge of nature. Statistics concerns methods for finding and establishing scientific knowledge. Machine learning concerns the automated generation of knowledge. Database theory concerns the maintenance of knowledge. But then what are knowledge, justified belief, truth, and evidence, and how do all of those concepts fit together? The branch of philosophy that studies those questions is called epistemology, which just means "study of knowledge". This class confronts the central epistemological questions. Topics include the analysis of knowledge and justification (what are they?), skepticism (the justifiability of beliefs that goes beyond the data available), and the relationship between knowledge and deductive logic (are the consequences of knowledge knowable?). The proposed answers involve a subtle interplay of logic, probability, causation, and counterfactual reasoning. The course is self-contained, so there are no prerequisites.
80-207 Philosophy & Literature: Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings
Intermittent: 9 units
Does literature simply "dress up," or even distort, the claims of reason? Or can literature illuminate certain truths that philosophy does not (or cannot) express? Tackling this "ancient quarrel" between the disciplines, this course explores the work of the Inklings, a group of early 20th century Oxford thinkers committed to a strong version of the thesis that literature can articulate, even "create," unique and irreducible kinds of truth and meaning. We examine the creative and philosophical work of the four principal members of the Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams) and take up their debates in the work of later scholars, such as Martha Nussbaum, Nathan A. Scott, Douglas Hedley, and Judith Wolfe. The first half of this course examines the philosophical writings of the Inklings on problems of ancient and modern philosophy alongside questions of literary genre and form. In the second half, we bring these philosophical frameworks to bear in close readings of some of the Inklings' most famous works, including The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings.
80-208 Critical Thinking
Intermittent: 9 units
This course is an introduction to practical reasoning. The course will contain an elementary introduction to concepts important for reasoning and decision making, such as validity, probability, and utilities. Students will extensively practice critically analyzing and evaluating a wide variety of arguments found in newspapers, magazines, and elementary accounts of scientific reasoning. In order to help students develop the skills to analyze and evaluate arguments, the course will introduce several software packages recently developed at CMU that help students diagram arguments and causal reasoning; these packages have been shown to improve students critical reasoning skills. In addition, students will learn about a wide variety of statistical, logical, psychological, and causal fallacies that are used to mislead people.
80-210 Logic and Proofs
All Semesters: 9 units
Logic and amp; Proofs is a web-based course and introduces students to central issues in modern logic. It is designed for individual learning with rich interactive environments and dynamic intelligent tutoring. The material is presented on-line, and most exercises are done on-line as well. Readings of historical and philosophical character complement the core content. This on-line course is supplemented, indeed given additional grounding, by weekly meetings in very small groups. There, we have collaborative reviews, substantive discussions and critical reflections. The central question of the course is this: How can we analyze the structure of rational discourse or, more specifically, the logical structure of argumentation? An answer to this question requires: (i) uncovering the logical form of statements; (ii) defining the correctness of logical steps; (iii) formulating inference rules for the logical forms; (iv) designing strategies for argumentation with the inference rules. The course takes these steps for both sentential and quantificational logic.

Course Website: https://oli.cmu.edu/courses/logic-proofs/
80-211 Logic and Mathematical Inquiry
Fall: 9 units
Since ancient times, mathematical arguments have served as a paradigm for rational inquiry. We will study fundamental mathematical concepts and informal proofs as they occur in everyday mathematics. We will also use the methods of mathematical logic, which provides formal symbolic languages, to help us understand the structure of a mathematical argument. Finally, we will make use of a new computational "proof assistant," called Lean, to develop fully rigorous, machine-checked proofs.
80-212 Arguments and Logical Analysis
Intermittent: 9 units
Are there rational methods that can further our knowledge? The notion of rational inquiry presupposes that there are appropriate methods for the pursuit of knowledge. In this course, we will investigate the means by which a successful argument justifies its conclusion, as well as various subtle ways in which other arguments fail. The course will explore the use of logic as an instrument in the study of arguments and reasoning, and it will serve as a gentle introduction to the elementary concepts of formal logic. We will take a historically informed approach to studying logic and argumentative fallacies, and we will discover that logical tools and methods are useful for constructing and analyzing arguments in all disciplines, from philosophy and history to psychology and physics. Our goals are to acquire a solid grasp of some fundamental tools of modern logic, and learn how to use them to make our thinking and writing clearer, more precise, and more critical. To this end, our coursework will consist in homework and exams on topics in logic, as well as writing assignments on a variety of topics. This course is intended for students from any discipline who would like to improve their writing and critical thinking skills, as well as students who are interested in learning logic without having had prior contact with the subject.
80-220 Philosophy of Science
Intermittent: 9 units
In this course, we will examine some historical case studies (e.g., the Copernican revolution in astronomy) against which we will assess views pertaining to the significance, justification, and production of scientific knowledge. For example, should scientific theories be understood literally or as computational devices for deriving new predictions? How can universal conclusions ever be justified by a finite data set? Does explanation contribute to a theory's confirmation by the evidence? Does science aim to find the truth? Is probability in the world or only in our minds? Is explanation a matter of finding causes or are causes whatever it is that explains? Is scientific rationality objective or culture-relative?
80-221 Philosophy of Social Science
Spring: 9 units
This course will explore numerous philosophical issues that arise in the practice of various social sciences. One central question of the course is whether we can use traditional scientific reasoning to understand social phenomena, e.g. social inequalities, violence, changes in politics, discriminary practices, ecnomic forcasting, etc. in the same way that we use them to understand natural phenomena, e.g. gases, organisms, protein structure, and planetary orbits. Some of the more specific questions we address are: Because humans possess free will and act with intentions while light rays and planets in motion do not, are we forced to use different kinds of explanations in the two cases? How can we explain social institutions that depend upon cooperation when there considerable pyschological evidence that cooperation doesn't help us in achieving our own personal goals? Whereas natural scientists actively conduct experiments, social scientists can often only collect statistical and qualitative data. Does this difference prevent social scientists from inferring causal relations and laws of social behavior? Is our understanding of social phenomena always value laden given that values are an inherent aspect of social life?
80-226 The Nature of Scientific Revolutions
Fall: 9 units
Science is an ever-changing enterprise. Most scientific advances, though significant, occur within a stable framework of accepted theories and data. A few episodes of change in the history of science involve discarding and replacing fundamental theories of the world. These are often accompanied by significant changes in the vocabulary in which those theories are expressed, the tools used by scientists, the phenomena on which scientists focus, and the kinds of explanations they consider acceptable. A very small number of these episodes change the way humanity views its ability to know the natural world and its place in the universe. The latter two kinds of change in science have often been called "scientific revolutions." We will focus on three such radical transformations: The "Copernican Revolution" (or "the Scientific Revolution") of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Darwinian revolution of the 19th century, and the quantum revolution of the late 19th and 20th centuries. This course has two intertwined components: history of science and philosophy of science. In the historical component, we will examine in some detail the three major scientific revolutions. The philosophical components will help us understand the reasoning involved in scientific theory change. This course does not require detailed knowledge of any of the sciences used in examples of revolutionary change.
80-234 Race, Gender, and Justice
Intermittent: 9 units
Race and gender, along with their interfaces and interactions with such other social identities as sexuality, (dis)ability, and class, structure our experience of almost every aspect of our social and political reality. Philosophers approach these kinds of social identities from a variety of perspectives. They ask what these kinds of social categories really are, what they mean for the ways we live our lives and the ways we perceive and understand the world, how they have (mis)informed our theoretical and practical understanding of the nature of justice and political power, and what is owed to those affected by racial and gendered injustice. This course explores these topics, drawing on tools and perspectives from epistemology, ethics, and especially social and political philosophy.
80-244 Environmental Ethics
Fall: 9 units
In this class, we'll try to figure out what obligations we might have to the natural environment and the non-human living beings within it, as well as what justice requires of us in our use of natural resources given the needs of other human beings. Among other things, we'll spend considerable time on animal ethics: What moral obligations do we have to non-human animals? Is it morally OK to eat them? Does a dog count (morally speaking) as much as a human? Does a factory-farm chicken count as much as a wild endangered tiger? Then, given that many of the most pressing environmental problemslike climate changeare collective action problems, we'll consider why these problems are so sticky, what obligations we have as individuals in dealing with these problems, and what a just collective solution might look like. To that end, we'll examine the processes fueling climate change, we'll look at who is responsible for these processes, and we'll try to determine whether any current proposal to deal with climate change is an effective, just response to the problem.
80-245 Medical Ethics
Spring: 9 units
This course provides a detailed introduction to core ethical issues in medical ethics and public policy. Topics include: the moral responsibilities of health care providers to patients and various third parties such as the government or insurance companies, the status of health as a social good, questions of justice in access to health care, and questions of individual liberty and social responsibility at the ends of life including issues such as cloning, abortion, physician assisted suicide, and the definition of death. We will also examine specific ethical issues in the conduct of medical research and look at the impact of technological innovation on our notions of health, disease, life, death, and the family. While the course engages such substantive ethical issues it also attempts to sharpen students' skills in practical reasoning through argument analysis, analogical reasoning, and the application of theory and principles to particular cases.
80-246 Moral Psychology
Intermittent: 9 units
In this course you will read cutting-edge scientific work on morality and you will learn to interpret it in light of recent lessons from biology and computer science. This course will also introduce you to distinctions that philosophers have found useful for moral-psychological and meta-ethical theorizing. Topics that we may discuss include: the psychology of normative ethics; moral emotions (e.g., disgust, guilt, shame, pride, etc.); the origins of morality in human and nonhuman animals; moral development in babies and children; the role of moral judgment in folk theorizing; and mathematical models of morality inspired by insights from machine learning. However, this course is exploratory and designed to be open-ended. I hope and expect that students will help to determine what we read and discuss.
80-249 AI, Society, and Humanity
Fall: 9 units
AI and robotic technologies are developing rapidly and are increasingly incorporated into decisions, practices, and activities that impact individual and social interests. To ensure that these technologies advance meritorious goals without undermining important values or relationships, stakeholders must be able to understand the diverse ways in which new technologies can impact the lives of individuals and communities, the diverse dimensions on which such impacts can be evaluated and measured and where in the lifecycle of product development these various impacts might be anticipated and addressed. Through a series of case studies of current or near-future AI and robotics technologies students in this course will explore frameworks for assessing, evaluating and regulating novel technologies with the goal of ensuring that they support and advance human interests and social values.
80-250 Ancient Philosophy
Fall: 9 units
This course will cover Ancient Greek philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the later Hellenistic writers. We will prepare the background for Socrates and Plato by studying major Presocratic philosophers such as the Milesians, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, and then dive in to a careful study of some of the central works of Plato and Aristotle. A key theme of the class will be the way in which Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle sought to define philosophy in opposition to sophistry, and how the lessons learned from their confrontation with sophistry informed their ethical and metaphysical thought. The final sections will discuss post-Aristotelian movements such as Epicureanism, Skepticism, and Stoicism.
80-251 Modern Philosophy
Spring: 9 units
This class will focus on the history of Western philosophy in the modern period, with special emphasis on the "early modern" era of roughly 1600-1800. Massive upheavals and conflicts in science, politics, and religion fueled attempts to find new ways of making sense of the world, and we will try to situate our philosophers within this rapidly evolving intellectual context. In particular, we will examine the impact of these changes on two subfields of philosophy: metaphysics (the study of the nature of reality, distinguishing it from mere appearance), and epistemology (roughly, the study of knowledge itself). We will ask, and attempt answers for, questions like: What is knowledge, can we achieve it, and if so, to what extent? To what extent, if any, can our most basic scientific instruments, the human senses, lead us to the true nature of the world? These questions will unavoidably send us down paths into other subfields, like philosophies of mind, of free will, of ethics, and of religion. After reading early modern philosophers like Ren and #233; Descartes, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, we will turn to some more recent work in the modern and contemporary eras to see what lessons (if any) were learned, and what new approaches (if any) have been taken in the quest for knowledge and reality.
80-252 Kant
Intermittent: 9 units
Immanuel Kant was a CMU sort of person. He was an enthusiastic follower of Isaac Newton, and his approach to fundamental philosophy was: "what would robotics be like from the viewpoint of the robot?" From that starting point, he investigated what would have to be the case for the robot to know anything about its environment. The resulting "critical philosophy" defined the relevant philosophical vocabulary for generations of prominent mathematicians and scientists into the 20th century, and is pivotal background both for both the "analytic" and the "continental" schools of philosophy. This course starts with essential background reading in pre-Kantian, early modern sources, including Descartes. Then it focuses on a detailed reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and related texts. Course requirements include written answers to reading questions and two short paper projects. There are no prerequisites.
80-253 Continental Philosophy
Intermittent: 9 units
This course provides students with an overview of key movements in European Philosophy. The historical background covers Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. The central tenets of phenomenology and existentialism (e.g., intentionality, Being-in-the-World, Bad Faith) will be discussed in the context of selected works from Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. The course will conclude with the background for and current work of Habermas.
80-254 Analytic Philosophy
Intermittent: 9 units
This course examines the revolutionary impact of philosophy at the turn of the 20th century on contemporary thought and progress. By the 1920s some scientists and philosophers became hopeful that the end of the long tradition of philosophical deadlock was finally within reach. Buoyed in particular by Einstein's theory of relativity and the invention of modern logic, they created a new kind of philosophy with the goal of applying logical and empirical methods to philosophical problems. This new approach led to new puzzles and paradoxes, along with a focus on the age old question of what can be known and what is meaningful. The modern fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and information and computer sciences all owe a debt to these sources, as does of course contemporary philosophy. Our quest will be to understand both what authors like Frege, Russell, and the Vienna Circle were up to in the first place, and how their work contributed to the world we live in today.
80-255 Pragmatism: Making Ideas Work
Intermittent: 9 units
American Pragmatism represented an energetic attempt to bridge the divergent cultures of science and the humanities. The movement's founder, C.S. Peirce, was trained in chemistry and worked as a physicist, but he was also deeply concerned with the contemporary philosophical portrayal of science, which distinguished sharply between theoretical knowledge and practice. Peirce responded by constructing a comprehensive philosophy emphasizing the scientific importance of community, fallibility, and action. Pragmatism was developed and popularized by William James, who aspired to be a painter and ended up as an acknowledged founder of modern empirical psychology. James extended Peirce's position by defending the role of values in even the purest of empirical sciences. John Dewey, who is also well-known for his role in education, interpreted science as an evolving social system and developed a theory of aesthetics based on what we now call the psychology of problem solving. The pragmatists made lasting contributions to modern statistics, logic, and social science and their emphases on community, fallibility, action, and value in science are still of primary importance in philosophy and in the ongoing dialogue between the scientific and humanistic cultures.
80-261 Experience, Reason, and Truth
Intermittent: 9 units
A central issue in Western philosophy has been whether reason or experience (or some of both?) provides the foundations for human knowledge. This course explores that question by looking at various "empiricist" vs. "rationalist" debates from the 17th century to the present day. We will focus on the problems encountered in trying to give an adequate account of the our knowledge of the external world, the structure of our minds, and the nature and limitations of human knowledge. The scope of our investigation will extend to the nature of mathematical knowledge, to "thought experiments" in both science and philosophy, and to "nativism" vs. "empiricism" issues in contemporary cognitive science and moral theory. The course has two main goals: (1) to study key metaphysical and epistemological issues surrounding the nature of human knowledge and (2) to help improve our analytical and critical skills by extracting and evaluating various relevant philosophical arguments.
80-270 Problems of Mind and Body: Meaning and Doing
Fall: 9 units
Central to our existence is meaning and our responses to it. We believe and desire things and on the basis of these attitudes, we make things happen. How can meaning exist in a seemingly mindless world? How can the world give rise to a mind capable of agency?This course tackles the mind body problem in respect of explaining meaning and human action. We tackle philosophical problems with serious engagement with empirical work from psychology and neuroscience. Students taking the course will tackle these problems with emphasis on developing analytical abilities.
80-271 Mind and Body: The Objective and the Subjective
Fall: 9 units
This course is about the subjective and the objective. "Subjective" captures the distinctive features that characterize what it means to be a psychological subject. This includes the power to represent, to think, feel, sense and in general to be conscious. Subjective features seem radically different from the physical world of matter and forces, a world that seems meaningless, unthinking and nonconscious. How can the subjective be rooted in the objective? We address this central philosophical problem by engaging philosophy with science. In this course, we will investigate thinking, sensing, imagining, dreaming, hallucinating, mindfulness and self-knowledge. As a result, we will explore how the subjective might be the objective. Students will develop analytical techniques such as conceptual analysis and argument analysis.
80-275 Metaphysics
Intermittent: 9 units
The topical agenda of this course will vary. Typical topics include the problem of personal identity, the nature of human freedom, the nature of the self, the nature of reality and being, the nature of causality, and the question of whether solutions to such problems can be given. Classical as well as contemporary philosophic texts will be studied. For Spring 2011: Issues we will consider, in no particular order, include: Do properties exist? Why should you think there is an external world? What is a number? Why should you think other people have mental states? What are natural kinds? What constitutes the identity of things through time? What constitutes the identity of persons through time? What does determinism mean? Is there freedom of the will? What is possibility? What is necessity? Are there other possible worlds? When does one event cause another, and what does that mean? What could a deity be, and should you think there is one?
80-276 Philosophy of Religion
Intermittent: 9 units
Historically and cross-culturally, philosophy tends to emerge as an effort to understand religion. Whether or not one is a believer, religion can be viewed as a "stress test" of the concepts we bring to our understanding of the mundane world. Can we know that there is an infinite being behind mundane reality? What can we comprehend about such a being? Is morality prior to or subject to that being's will? Can such a being be innocent of our wrong-doing? If there is such a being, are we responsible for anything? All of those questions depend as much on what we mean by possibility, freedom and responsibility as they do on the truth of religion. In this class, we fearlessly confront those questions and, in the Carnegie Mellon spirit, we relate each philosophical reading to relevant issues in science and logic. Since the philosophy of religion literature focuses primarily on a Judeo-Christian context, the class begins with a short survey of the religious contexts of ancient Greece, Hinduism, and Budhism to provide points of reference from which to question Judeo-Christian presuppositions.
80-280 Linguistic Analysis
Spring: 9 units
How do physical events (sounds) or physical objects (marks on paper) create or transmit meaning? Linguistic values are assigned to sounds and marks, based on specific physical features, creating phonemes and graphemes. Juxtapositions of phonemes and graphemes create morphemes, minimal units that hold meaning, with syntax arranging morphemes into sentences, minimal units of information. Further structural changes change the mood of a sentence and give it new function - as a request for information, demand for action, presentation of alternatives, and so on. The goal of this course is to investigate the structure of basic sentences and then the changes to structure by which communicative function is realized. Building on material taught in Nature of Language, this course looks in detail at the syntax of human languages, taking into account cross-linguistic variety.
Prerequisite: 80-180
80-282 Phonetics and Phonology I
Fall: 9 units
This course aims to provide students with practical tools for the study of speech sounds. The first step in this analysis is isolating the speech sounds themselves, for any particular language. Following this, the relation between the articulatory features of sounds and their acoustic properties is examined using spectrograms and other devices. Basic phonological notions are covered, tracing their development in the twentieth century up through optimality theory. In optimality theory, contrast and allophonic variation are explained in terms of an input-output device which selects the most harmonic candidate still faithful to phonemes in the input. The course should be relevant not only to linguistics students, but to students of language generally, with applications to sociolinguistics, child language development, speech recognition technologies, and the study of foreign languages.
Prerequisite: 80-180
80-283 It Matters How You Say It
Spring: 9 units
Why do languages give us multiple ways to say the same thing? Given that in English we can say "My dog ate my homework," why do we sometimes prefer "My homework got eaten by my dog"? Why do we sometimes choose to refer to someone with just a pronoun ("he"), and sometimes choose their full name ("Charles Dickens")? What's the difference between telling someone: "This expensive coffee is tasteless," or telling them: "This tasteless coffee was expensive"? This course is about the choices that languages give us for conveying a particular message, and the communicative effects of those choices. We will see that it is both the words you use and the way you put them together that determines the total communicative effect of your utterance. While the course will focus on English, students will have an opportunity to work on another language of interest in their final project.
80-285 Natural Language Syntax
Spring: 9 units
This course regards modern linguistics as a set of powerful tools for understanding and using language, and among all the subfields of linguistics, syntax as one of the most powerful. There are, however, many approaches to syntax so how should one choose which syntax to study? In 1957, Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, building on earlier research but at the same time providing a novel approach to age-old problems in linguistics, particularly the productivity problem and the learning problem. (How do speakers produce and understand novel sentences, and how do children learn without being taught?) While it is true that the field has progressed far since 1957, Syntactic Structures still stands out for its simplicity and usefulness. In this course we look at how more recent developments in syntax can be reconciled with this earlier approach. Particular focus is on how students can use syntax, in learning other languages and in refining their own use of language.
Prerequisites: 80-180 or 80-284
80-286 Words and Word Formation: Introduction to Morphology
Fall: 9 units
How many words do you know? Is 'gonna' one word or two? How many meanings does 'unlockable' have? If someone can be 'inept', why can't they be 'ept'? In this course we study the lingusitics of words and word formation, known as morphology. We begin by asking what a word is, about the internal structure of words, and how new words are formed. Throughout, we will consider these questions from a cross-linguistic perspective, looking at morphological data from a wide range of languages. We will also consider how morphology interacts with other subfields of linguistics, including phonology, syntax and semantics. Finally, we will survey morphological questions from the perspectives of language acquisition, psychology, and cognitive science.
Prerequisite: 80-180
80-287 Language Variation and Change
Spring: 9 units
We all know that languages differ and change, and that even two people who know the "same" language can sound quite different to each other, use different words, or even different sentence structures. This course takes students on a tour through linguistic difference across languages, within languages, and over time. We will look at how historical linguists reconstruct dead languages, how sociolinguists model language change, and how linguistic typologists assess whether some linguistic features (e.g., word order) are more or less common than others. We will also explore how linguistic variation and change are related to issues of social status and political power, and we'll investigate explanations for variation and change, drawing on literature from computational modelling and psycholinguistics. There is no prerequisite, and no prior linguistic knowledge is assumed.
80-288 Intonation: The Meaning of Linguistic Tunes
Spring: 9 units
Intonation is the melody of speech: how a speaker's pitch changes over the course of an utterance, along with the placement of emphasis, or sentence-level stress. Intonation and stress contribute to the interpretation of utterances in multiple ways. For example, the questions "Did BOB go to the store?" and "Did Bob go to the STORE?" contain the same words, but request different information. Similarly, whether the sentence "Bob went to the store" is interpreted as a statement or as a question, and whether as expressing certainty or uncertainty on the part of the speaker, depends on its intonation. Features of intonation can also convey information about the speaker's attitudes and affect: sarcasm and irony, for example, may be signaled by intonation. The goal of this course is two-fold. First, students will learn about the phonetic correlates of intonation and stress, and learn how to analyze intonation as a system of high and low tones, using the intonation transcription system ToBI. This will enable students to accurately describe the intonation pattern of an utterance. Second, students will learn how intonation is used to convey semantic and pragmatic information. The course will focus primarily on English, but other languages will be explored to serve as a basis of comparison. The course will be of interest to students interested in learning some of the intricacies of face-to-face linguistic communication. Students in the departments of English, Modern Languages, Language Technology, Human-Computer Interaction, and Psychology will find material relevant to their major topics. The course serves as an elective for the Linguistics Major, and is a natural companion to other courses on the expression of linguistic meaning: Meaning in Language, Language in Use, and Syntax and Discourse. The course requires basic background in phonetics.
Prerequisites: 80-283 or 85-385 or 80-488 or 80-180 or 80-284
80-305 Game Theory
Fall: 9 units
Game theory is the study of interactive decision-making: making choices in the context of other agents who are also making choices. Famous examples include the Prisoner's Dilemma (pitting rational self-interest against the benefits of cooperation), and the Cournot duopoly (a basic model of market competition and supply-and-demand). Game theory has been applied to situations as diverse as traffic flow, auctions, the search and competition for scarce resources, and bargaining. This course will develop conceptual and technical facility with the mathematical tools used to model and analyze such situations. We will cover both simultaneous and sequential games and become familiar with a variety of concepts such as strict and weak dominance, randomization, expected utility maximization, never-best responses, non-credible threats, and time discounting. We'll also study solution concepts such as Nash equilibrium, correlated equilibrium, rationalizability, and subgame perfect equilibrium. Throughout the course we will take the opportunity to actually play several of the games we study to help build intuitions and foster insights into the formal mathematical models we develop. Some experience with mathematical methods (definitions, proofs, etc.) will be helpful.
80-306 Decision Theory
Spring: 9 units
This course is an introduction to formal models of choice and decision-making. We begin by examining choice under certainty, developing both qualitative and quantitative models of preference. We then expand our analysis to take into account uncertainty, focusing on the von Neumann-Morgenstern theory of expected utility and Savage's classic axioms. Empirical challenges to models are emphasized throughout, in response to which we will consider a variety of alternative representations of uncertainty (e.g., Dempster-Shafer belief functions, non-unique probability measures) and preference (e.g., framing effects, prospect theory).
80-310 Formal Logic
Fall: 9 units
Among the most significant developments in modern logic is the formal analysis of the notions of provability and logical consequence for the logic of relations and quantification, known as first-order logic. These notions are related by the soundness and completeness theorems: a logical formula is provable if and only if it is true under every interpretation. This course provides a formal specification of the syntax and semantics of first-order logic and then proves the soundness and completeness theorems. Other topics may include: basic model theory, intuitionistic, modal, and higher-order logics.
Prerequisites: 21-127 or 15-251 or 80-210 or 80-211
80-311 Undecidability and Incompleteness
Spring: 9 units
U and amp; I focuses on two fundamental results: the undecidability of logic (established by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing) and the incompleteness of mathematical theories (discovered by Kurt G and #246;del). The proofs of these results require a novel metamathematical perspective, but also striking logical concepts and fascinating mathematical techniques. In this course, the theorems are not just formulated but actually proved. We begin with the axiomatic development of elementary set theory that allows, at the same time, the formal representation of informal mathematics like number theory. With this basis, one can show that syntactic notions concerning set theory are representable in the very theory. It is then easy to prove that set theory is incomplete. To show that logic is undecidable, the crucial concept of computation is introduced via Turing machines. The two central concepts - proof and computation - are fundamental for mathematics, computer science and, in particular, artificial intelligence. The undecidability and incompleteness results are among the most significant contributions of modern logic to the foundations of mathematics. They provide also the beginnings of a deeper understanding of mental processes in cognitive science and, thus, of the human mind. To understand the latter connections, we will read about and discuss historical as well as philosophical aspects of the subject.
Prerequisites: 15-251 Min. grade C or 80-211 Min. grade C or 80-210 Min. grade B or 21-300 Min. grade C or 80-310 Min. grade C
80-312 Mathematical Revolutions
Spring: 9 units
Mathematics is a central part of our intellectual experience. It is connected to sophisticated philosophical perspectives, say, in the work of Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, as well as in contemporary analytic philosophy; it is equally connected to fundamental views in the sciences, say, in the work of Ptolemy, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, as well as in contemporary cosmology. The common view that mathematics - if not directly "static" - is evolving in a linear fashion, does not withstand historical scrutiny. Indeed, there are many dramatic conceptual changes concerning the very nature and object of mathematics.
80-315 Logics for Knowledge and Belief
Fall: 9 units
Standard logical languages can express negation ("not p"), conjunction ("p and q"), material implication ("if p then q"), quantification ("for all x, p(x)"), etc. But they don't directly capture statements like the following: "Alice knows p." "Henceforth, it will be the case that p." "It ought to be the case that p." "If it had been the case that p, it would have been the case that q." "Everybody knows p." "Everybody knows that everybody knows p." "Infinitely often in the future, p will be true." "After an announcement of p, it will be the case that Alice knows q." "If p is not permitted, then you ought to know that p is not permitted." etc. Modal logic is a very general framework for systematically reasoning about statements like these. This course is an introduction to mathematical modal logic and its applications in philosophy, computer science, linguistics, and economics, with emphasis on epistemic interpretations (i.e., logics for representing and reasoning about knowledge/belief). We begin with a rigorous development of propositional modal logic: the basic language, interpretation in relational structures, axiom systems, proofs, and validity. We prove soundness and completeness of various systems using the canonical model method and study model equivalence and expressivity results. We also consider topological semantics as an alternative to relational semantics, and investigate the connection between the two. In the latter part of the course we turn our attention to more specialized logical systems and their applications, as determined by the interests of the class. Topics may include: quantified modal logic, multi-agent systems and the notion of common knowledge (with applications to game theory), temporal and dynamic logics for (nondeterministic) program execution, logics for reasoning about counterfactuals, public announcement logic, deontic logic, intuitionistic logic, and others.
Prerequisites: 15-251 Min. grade C or 80-211 Min. grade C or 21-127 Min. grade C or 21-128 Min. grade C or 80-212 Min. grade C or 80-210 Min. grade C
80-316 Logic and AI
Intermittent: 9 units
In this course, we will study logical systems that are relevant to, and motivated by, research in artificial intelligence. We will see how key ideas and advances in logic have found (and continue to find) natural applications in AI. More generally, we will see how logic and AI can benefit, and historically have benefited, from each other. A central aim of this course is to understand how logical languages of varying expressive power can be put to use in AI as a tool for representation and reasoning. Some of the topics that we will be focusing on are (1) non-monotonic and default logics, (2) modal logics for reasoning about knowledge/belief, temporal structures, and computation, (3) probabilistic logics (and the relation between logic and probability), (4) logics of graphical causal models and counterfactuals, as well as (5) elements of probabilistic programming and computable probability theory.
Prerequisites: 80-610 or 80-310
80-324 Philosophy of Economics
Intermittent: 9 units
The science of economics has come to occupy a central position in contemporary society. Because of this central position in political decision making, economics is intertwined with a number of other philosophical issues surrounding justice, rights, and fairness. The central theme of this course will be on the arguments in favor and against markets as effective solutions to political problems. This issue will allow us to analyze a wide number of foundational issues in economics including the testability of economic claims, the use of "rationality" postulates, the foundation of the right to property, and measuring the success or failure of an economy.
80-325 Foundations of Causation and Machine Learning
Fall: 9 units
How can we define causality? Does smoking cause cancer? Can one find causality from observational data without temporal information? In our daily life and science, people often attempt to answer such causal questions for the purpose of understanding, proper manipulation of systems, and robust prediction under interventions. In the past decades, interesting advances were made in machine learning, philosophy, statistics, and economics for tackling long-standing causality problems, and a number of researchers have been recognized with the Turing Award (to Pearl in 2012) the Nobel Prize (to Granger in 2003 and to Sims in 2011). This course is primarily concerned with historical and technical developments of modern causality research, focusing particularly on how to discover causality from observational data and how to infer the causal effect of one variable on another. Thinking more broadly, causal analysis is a particular branch of unsupervised multivariate analysis. Accordingly, this course also provides a big picture of the foundations of causation and unsupervised machine learning. We start with unsupervised learning and multivariate statistical analysis problems including factor analysis, principal component analysis, and independent component analysis, and formulate their assumptions, develop their solutions, and study their connections with causal analysis. Finally, we investigate how the causal perspective helps in solving advanced machine learning or artificial intelligence problems, including transfer learning, image-to-image translation, reinforcement learning, and unsupervised deep learning.
80-330 Ethical Theory
Spring: 9 units
This course provides a detailed survey of the structure of prominent theories of normative ethics. The space of possible consequentialist theories is surveyed in detail, allowing students to understand what distinguishes different forms of consequentialism and to assess the relative merits of these theories. The space of non-consequentialist theories is also surveyed, although in slightly less detail. The course engages classic texts from Aristotle, Kant and Mill and contemporary essays by leading philosophers.
80-334 Social and Political Philosophy
Intermittent: 9 units
Political philosophers are interested in whether, and to what extent, government use of coercion can be justified. This question involves many facets, including what gives the government the legitimate authority (if any) to coercively enforce the rules, what limits there are (if any) to the legitimate kinds of rules the government can enforce (and why), what obligations (if any) the government has to the citizens that are governed by its rules, and what claims (if any) citizens of a state can make upon one another. This course provides a systematic investigation of such questions as well as the concepts that are often appealed to in political theory, such as "justice," "equality," and "fairness." Readings will be comprised of classic and contemporary theorists from within the liberal political tradition as well as theorists critical of this tradition and its ability to live up to the lofty ideals it espouses.
80-335 Social and Political Philosophy
Fall: 9 units
Broadly speaking, political philosophers are interested in whether, and to what extent, government use of coercion can be justified, and how formal social and political institutions should be structured in order to be legitimate. Social philosophy encompasses these political questions, but also looks at how individuals should live together and how individual behaviors can impact not only state institutions but also more informal social norms and institutions. This is an advanced course in social and political philosophy, aimed at providing students with an in-depth familiarity with classic and contemporary questions both theoretical and applied.
80-336 Philosophy of Law
Intermittent: 9 units
In recent years, the U.S. legal system has been beset by claims of overcriminalization, racially discriminatory enforcement, and inadequate or unequal protection of individual civil rights. What should we make of these claims, and what, if anything, would be implied by their truth? In seeking to answer these questions, this course will examine the nature of the law and its enforcement. We will begin by discussing the issue of criminalization and whether the expansion of the criminal law is or is not problematic. From there, we will turn to the more foundational questions of what, precisely, the law is, and what its connection to morality is or should be. Are we obligated to obey the law, and if so, why? Finally, we will ask whether it is possible for the law to remain neutral with regards to morality and politics, and whether the supposed "neutrality" of the law may itself be an instrument of oppression. If the legal system lacks the kind of neutrality that many legal theorists claim for it, what (if anything) does that license us (as citizens) to do?
80-348 Health, Human Rights, and International Development
Fall: 9 units
Approximately 767 million people, or more than 10% of the world's population, live in a condition the World Bank refers to as "extreme poverty". Those who live in extreme poverty frequently lack effective access to proper nutrition, adequate shelter, safe drinking water, and sanitation. As a result, they also bear the greatest burdens of famine and epidemic disease and frequently face social and political conditions of unrest and systematic oppression. This course aims to introduce students to the problem of global public health and its intersection with claims of human rights. We will focus on theoretical accounts of human rights and questions arising from them: What constitutes a human right, and on what basis or bases might the existence of human rights be defended? If human rights exist, whose responsibility is it to see that they are defended/provided/not violated, and why? What is the relationship between health deficits and human rights deficits, and what would a "human right to health" look like? Are global institutions such as the protection of strong intellectual property rights consistent with respect for a human right to health?
80-350 Adam Smith
Intermittent: 9 units
Adam Smith is known as the father of economics. Many view Smith as a champion, not just of the science of economics, but of modern libertarian thought. His last book, The Wealth of Nations, is seen as the first defense of the value of free market capitalism. Less well known is Smith's earlier work which presents a altogether different picture. In it, Smith emphases the importance of altruism, empathy, and the value of interpersonal connection. In this course we will investigate the thought of Adam Smith, and find that he is far more complex than often portrayed.
80-358 Hume
Intermittent: 9 units
This course will investigate the philosophy of David Hume. We will focus on his philosophical thought expressed in the book A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume was an influential philosopher who wrote on many issues ranging from skepticism, to ethics, to the philosophy of science, and his views continue to be influential today. In this course we will attempt to understand Hume's philosophy on all of these subjects both to better understand his contribution to the philosophy of his day, but also to see what his arguments can contribute to contemporary thought.
80-365 Ramsey
Intermittent: 9 units
Frank Ramsey's untimely death in 1930, at the age of 26, marked the loss of a versatile and original thinker. During his short life, he made decisive and influential contributions to philosophy, mathematics and economics. The entire core of Ramsey's philosophical and scientific work consists of no more than 15 papers; in all cases they are remarkable essays that changed the intellectual topics they touched. This course will explore Ramsey's seminal contributions to probability and decision theory, philosophical and mathematical logic, the foundations of mathematics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. We will read some of Ramsey's original papers as well as more recent work inspired in response to, or as an elaboration on, Ramsey's views. We will see how Ramsey laid the foundations of the theory of subjective probability and decision theory, offered one of the first formulations of a deflationary theory of truth, and inspired contemporary work in philosophical logic (particularly on the logic of conditionals). We will explore Ramsey's influential work in the philosophy of science - his accounts of laws, causality, and the nature of scientific theories - as well as his mathematical contributions to logic and (what is now known as) Ramsey theory. By examining Ramsey's contributions and their impact, the course will give a sense of their important position as quintessential examples of work in the analytic tradition, demonstrating the intellectual fruitfulness of interdisciplinary inquiry into foundational questions and of mathematically informed philosophy.
80-381 Meaning in Language
Fall: 9 units
One of the more elusive topics in the linguistics of natural language is meaning. This is the field of semantics. A key question to answer in semantics is what meaning even is. In this course, we will give an answer to this question, starting with the meaning of basic sentences. These are sentences that describe what is the case. From there, we break sentence meaning into the meaning of words. In the other direction, we consider the meaning of non-basic sentences such as questions and imperatives. We also consider the meaning of complex sentences and sentences that express irrealis. That starts with the subject of negation, with sentences that describe what is not the case. From there we move to sentences used to talk about what could be the case, what will be the case, what could've been the case, and what could never have been the case. A peculiarity of semantics is that the abstract questions we ask yield answers that are highly concrete and practical. But that only makes sense given that language permeates every human activity and it really matters what we mean by what we say.
Prerequisite: 80-180
80-382 Phonetics and Phonology II
Spring: 9 units
One of the central questions of research in human speech is how the patterning of speech sounds (phonology) relates to the articulatory, acoustics, and perceptual (phonetic) properties of speech; this problem is often referred to as the "phonetics-phonology interface". In this course, students will act as co-investigators on a topic at the phonetics-phonology interface, carrying out an acoustic study to test hypotheses that are relevant to phonological research. As co-researchers, students will be involved in all aspects of data collection and analysis. Lessons in phonetics will be designed to train students on the necessary skills and concepts required, including understanding the phonetic correlates of the phenomenon under investigation, as well as data analysis and interpretation of the results. A presentation session will be organized for the end of the semester. In tandem with the phonetic study, related phonological phenomena will be investigated throughout the semester. Students will finish this course with a solid understanding of how to do phonetic research, and an appreciation of how various theoretical frameworks have attempted to account for phonological phenomena. Assessment will take the form of quizzes, take-home problem sets, reflections on the research process, and a final report and presentation.
Prerequisites: 80-180 and 80-282
80-383 Language in Use
Fall: 9 units
In ordinary conversation, what a speaker conveys by the utterance of a sentence may go beyond, or be quite different from, the meaning that could be assigned to the sentence or expression that they use without consideration of the context in which it occurs. For example, the sentence "I have homework" means one thing; but it conveys something more when uttered in answer to the question "Do you want to go see a movie tonight?" In this course, we explore how the systematic study of linguistic meaning can be expanded from the domain of the sentence to the domain of connected, multiparty discourse. This involves taking into account the contributions of context, and of speaker and hearer's beliefs, goals and intentions, to the construction of meaning. This course is one of the set of courses on language and meaning offered by the Program in Linguistics, including in addition to this: 80-283 It Matters How You Say It, 80-288 Intonation, and 80-381 Meaning in Language. Each of these courses can be taken independently; as a set, these courses provide a comprehensive introduction to contemporary approaches to natural language semantics and pragmatics.
Prerequisites: 80-100 or 80-180
80-384 Linguistics of Turkic Languages
Intermittent: 9 units
In this course we look at languages from within a single language group, Turkic. Turkic languages are spoken across continental Asia and include such languages as Turkmen, Tatar, Kazakh, Uighur, and Uzbek. In this course we concentrate especially on Yakut (Sakha) and Azerbaijani. Modern Turkish will provide a reference language. We look at various linguistic systems within each language (phonology, morphology, syntax, and writing systems) both to understand each particular language and to see how the languages are related. We consider the impact of diachronic factors on the synchronic study of language. This course can be seen as an extended case-study for applying concepts and analytical strategies from basic linguistics, as taught in Nature of Language, Phonetics and Phonology, Invented Languages, and other relevant courses.
Prerequisite: 80-180
80-385 Linguistics of Germanic Languages
Intermittent: 9 units
The Germanic languages include English, Dutch, Frisian, German, Pennsylvanisch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, excluding Finnish. The course will serve as an extended case-study for the application of concepts and analytical strategies taught in basic linguistics courses to some of these languages. Specifically, we take a bottom-up approach to Dutch, Frisian, Icelandic, and Danish, starting with raw language material whenever possible, which we progressively analyze in terms of phonetics and phonology, morphology, and syntax. These case studies lead to comparisons between the languages and insight into their development and divergence over time. We follow this hands-on approach with historical and grammatical overviews, touching on some of the outstanding issues in Germanic linguistics. The approach should also help bring out the relevance of diachronic factors in the synchronic study of language, with historical forms of English being open to investigation, as these often reflect patterns found in contemporary Germanic languages.
Prerequisite: 80-180
80-388 Linguistic Typology: Diversity and Universals
Fall: 9 units
What is the most common word order? What is the rarest consonant? What kinds of case marking are attested in the world's languages? Which linguistic structures tend to co-occur? What can we learn by looking at the rarity of linguistic structures? These are the kinds of questions central to linguistic typology, the study and classification of languages based on their structural properties. In this course we will look at the variety of linguistic structures attested in several linguistic subfields, including phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Understanding linguistic diversity is closely tied with the search for linguistic universals, since there appear to be some ways in which linguistic structures seem to be limited. But what is the nature of those limits (if they truly exist), and what do they tell us? We will also look at methodological issues that arise in comparing languages and forming meaningful generalizations. Prerequisites: 80-180, and one of 80-280, 80-282, 80-285 or permission of the instructor.
Prerequisites: 80-180 and (80-280 or 80-285 or 80-282)
80-405 Game Theory
Spring: 9 units
Game theory is the study of interactive decision-making: making choices in the context of other agents who are also making choices. Famous examples include the "Prisoner's Dilemma" (pitting rational self-interest against the benefits of cooperation), and the "Cournot duopoly" (a basic model of market competition and supply-and-demand). Game theory has been applied to situations as diverse as traffic flow, auctions, the search and competition for scarce resources, and bargaining. This course will develop conceptual and technical facility with the mathematical tools used to model and analyze such situations. We will cover games in strategic and extensive form and games of perfect and imperfect information; we'll also study solution concepts such as Nash equilibrium and rationalizability. Finally, throughout the course we will take the opportunity to actually play several of the games we study to help build intuitions and foster insights into the formal mathematical models we develop.
80-411 Proof Theory
Intermittent: 9 units
An introduction to the general study of deductive systems and their properties. Topics include the natural deduction and sequent calculi; cut-elimination and normalization theorems; metamathematical properties of first-order logic and theories of arithmetic; and conservation theorems.
Prerequisites: 21-300 or 80-310 or 80-311
80-413 Category Theory
Fall: 9 units
Category theory is a formal framework devoted to studying the structural relationships between mathematical objects. Developed in the mid-20th century to attack geometrical problems, subsequent progress has revealed deep connections to algebra and logic, as well as to mathematical physics and computer science. The course emphasizes two perspectives. On one hand, we develop the basic theory of categories, regarded as mathematical structures in their own right. At the same time, we will consider the application of these results to concrete examples from logic and algebra. Some familiarity with abstract algebra or logic required.
80-419 Interactive Theorem Proving
Intermittent: 9 units
Interactive theorem proving involves using computational proof assistants to verify that mathematical proofs are correct, or to verify that hardware and software designs meet their formal specifications. This course uses a new interactive theorem prover, Lean, to explore this new technology and its logical foundations. We will study dependent type theory, a powerful and expressive language for representing mathematical objects, algorithms, and proofs. We will also consider automated methods that can be used in support of formal verification, including propositional, equational, first-order, and higher-order methods, as well as decision procedures for real and integer arithmetic.
Prerequisites: 21-300 or 15-317 or 80-310 or 80-211
Course Website: https://leanprover.github.io/theorem_proving_in_lean/
80-445 Shift Capstone Experience
Spring
The Societal and Human Impacts of Future Technologies capstone experience will be taken in either the fall or spring of the senior year. It is required for all SHIFT minors. The purpose of the capstone experience is for students to demonstrate learning over time within the minor. Key learning experiences include incorporating concepts, ideas, and amp; frameworks from multiple disciplinary perspectives, using disciplinary perspectives in appropriate ways, given their complementary strengths and amp; weaknesses, generating a multidisciplinary (2) of some current or near-future technology, collaborating with people of different disciplinary backgrounds, and communicating a single, integrated analysis of the impacts and amp; opportunities of this novel technology ( and amp; recommended actions). SHIFT minors should work with the minor advisor during the Spring of their junior year to design an appropriate capstone experience.
80-447 Global Justice
Spring: 9 units
Until recently, the dominant view of international relations has been that the governments and citizens of one country have no moral obligations to those beyond their borders. With the rapid growth in globalization has come a drastic shift in attitudes about our obligations to those with whom we share global institutions of trade but neither legal systems nor national identities. This course aims to introduce students to the problem of global distributive justice in the context of a globalized world, with emphases on both theoretical accounts of justice and the practical implications of those accounts for important current issues. Theoretical topics will include the nature of justice, the sources and limits of our moral obligations, and how and whether those notions of justice extend to global society; while applied topics will include our obligations with regard to the environment, human rights deficits, the status of women, and global economic policy.
80-449 EHPP Capstone Course
Fall: 12 units
In this Fall 2023 capstone course, Ethics, History, and Public Policy majors will carry out a collaborative or individual research project that examines a compelling current policy issue that can be illuminated with historical research and philosophical and policy analysis. Students will develop an original research report based on both archival and contemporary data and present their results in a public forum at the end of the semester. Please note: this semester we are experimenting with a more flexible set of research options for EHPP students, rather than a single project topic that all students are required to work on. Collaborative projects in groups of 2-3 students are encouraged, but individual projects that integrate historical, ethical, and policy perspectives are permissible too.
80-484 Language and Thought
Spring: 9 units
The goal of this course is to provide students with the opportunity to creatively explore some difficult questions about the relationship between language and thought, questions such as: How does the human capacity to use language relate to the human capacity to think? Does the language that a person speaks affect the way she thinks? If meaning is in the head, how can we succeed in communicating with each other? How is our ability to reason related to our ability to successfully communicate? None of these questions have definite answers; throughout the course, we will draw on work in philosophy, psychology and linguistics to try to understand some of the possible answers that might be entertained. Students in the course should be prepared for extensive reading, writing and peer discussion assignments.
80-488 Acoustics of Human Speech: Theory, Data, and Analysis
Spring: 9 units
In this course, students will learn how to acoustically analyse human speech, and in so doing, will learn about both universal and language-particular acoustic characteristics of human speech. The class, which will comprise both lectures and a lab component, will introduce the basic principles of the physics of sound and how the source spectrum is modified by the vocal tract, but the focus throughout will be towards developing a solid understanding of how to perform the relevant analyses. Each week will introduce a new topic, chosen to exemplify a particular acoustic phenomenon. Lectures for that week will provide the theoretical basis for understanding the phenomenon, both in terms of acoustic theory and in articulatory terms. The lab for that week will provide students with relevant acoustic data to analyse using PRAAT, an open-source software used for acoustic analysis. Potential topics include: What does it mean to say someone speaks with "vocal fry", and how do we measure this? Why do children replace [r] with [w]? How can we compare sounds in two different languages? For example, what are the acoustic characteristics of [r] and [l] in English and Japanese, such that these sounds count as two different sounds in English, but are so similar in Japanese? What makes an [s] so noisy compared to an [f]? What happens to speech sounds when we talk quickly, or when we're sick and our nose is stuffed up? At the conclusion of the course, students will have a solid understanding of the acoustic characteristics of human speech, both in terms of the underlying theory and how to measure such phenomena. Further, they will be able to translate questions about speech into measurable acoustic variables. There is no prerequisite for this course. While technical material will be covered, no background in linguistics, acoustics, physics, or math is assumed, and all required skills will be taught as needed.
80-495 Independent Study
All Semesters
Undergraduate Independent Study Philosophy Department majors.
80-501 Undergraduate Research in Philosophy
Fall and Spring
This course is for students pursuing a research project under the supervision of a faculty member in the Philosophy Department. Time commitments as well as specific requirements, expectations, and deliverables of the research experience must be worked out in advance between the student and the supervising faculty member. The units can vary depending on the scope of the project.
80-514 Categorical Logic
Spring: 9 units
This course focuses on applications of category theory in logic and computer science. A leading idea is functorial semantics, according to which a model of a logical theory is a set-valued functor on a category determined by the theory. This gives rise to a syntax-invariant notion of a theory and introduces many algebraic methods into logic, leading naturally to the universal and other general models that distinguish functorial from classical semantics. Such categorical models occur, for example, in denotational semantics. e.g. treating the lambda-calculus via the theory of cartesian closed categories. Higher-order logic is treated categorically by the theory of topoi. We shall see how this idea connects logic with topology (the models of a theory form a space). A prerequisite for this course is familiarity with basic category theory (as treated in the course 80-413/713).
Prerequisite: 80-413 Min. grade C

Course Website: https://awodey.github.io/catlog/
80-516 Causality and Machine Learning
Fall: 9 units
In the past decades, interesting advances were made in machine learning, philosophy, and statistics for tackling long-standing causality problems, including how to discover causal knowledge from observational data, known as causal discovery, and how to infer the effect of interventions. A number of researchers have been recognized with the Turing Award (to Pearl in 2012) the Nobel Prize (to Granger in 2003 and to Sims in 2011). Furthermore, it has recently been shown that the causal view may facilitate understanding and solving various machine learning or artificial intelligence problems such as transfer learning, semi-supervised learning, disentanglement, and adversarial vulnerability. This course is concerned with understanding causality, learning causality from observational data, and using causality to tackle a class of learning problems. We will particularly focus on two key problems in causality. One is causal discovery. It is well known that "correlation does not imply causality," but we will make this statement more precise by asking what assumptions, what information in the data, and what procedures enable us to successfully recover causal information. Causal influences may take place between the underlying hidden variables, and what we measure may be their reflections; so we will also see how to find the underlying hidden "causal" variables as well as their causal relations by analyzing measured variables. Its implication in unsupervised deep learning will be discussed. The other is how to properly make use of causal information. This includes identification of causal effects, counterfactual reasoning, improving machine learning in light of causal knowledge, and forecasting in complex environments, and we will investigate how the causal perspective helps in domain adaptation, image-to-image translation, and deep reinforcement learning.
80-517 Seminar on Topics in Logic: Algorithmic Randomness
Intermittent: 9 units
What is randomness? One way to think about it is as a property of sequences of, say, events, experimental outcomes, observations, or symbols from some alphabet: a sequence is random if it is unruly, irregular, patternless. This conception of randomness plays a significant role in a variety of fields, including cryptography, information theory, the foundations of probability and statistics, computability theory, and certain computational models of learning. To build some intuition, consider the two binary strings 0010111110 and 0101010101. The first string seems more random-looking than the second. This is because the second string displays an obvious pattern that is very easy to describe and that makes it look highly predictable. But can these intuitions be made precise? Is it possible to provide a rigorous mathematical characterization of the notion of a random sequence? This seminar will provide an introduction to the theory of algorithmic randomnessan active branch of computability theoryaccording to which a sequence is random if it does not display any algorithmically detectable patterns. We will begin by discussing von Mises' theory of collectives, a precursor to the theory of algorithmic randomness; then, we will see how von Mises' work led to the modern computability-theoretic approach to randomness. We will focus on both the mathematical details of the theory of algorithmic randomness and its philosophical consequences. We will pay special attention to the connections between randomness, probability, and the philosophical interpretations of probability. Among the questions that we will address are: What is the relationship between probability and randomness? Is probability more primitive a concept than randomness, or is a precise analysis of randomness needed to understand what probabilities are? Is it possible to define "absolute" randomness? Does randomness have to satisfy any laws?
80-521 Seminar on Formal Epistemology: Belief and Evidence
Spring: 9 units
There has been a flurry of recent work on a variety of modal logics designed for reasoning about knowledge, belief, and evidence, in both static and dynamic contexts. What is the relationship between knowledge and belief? What is the role of evidence and justification? How do we react to new information, update our beliefs, and reason conditionally? These are old questions which modern logical frameworks promise to shed new light on. In this seminar we will read and analyze contemporary papers on these topics, both to gain an understanding of the current state-of-the-art, and to critically assess the extent to which these formal frameworks are genuinely enhancing our understanding of the underlying phenomena of interest.
80-524 Topics in Formal Epistemology: Topological Philosophy of Science
Intermittent: 9 units
When faced with a question concerning learning or scientific method, one habitually reaches for logic and probability theory. But sometimes habits should be questioned. There is increasing awareness, scattered across philosophy, informatics, mathematical statistics, that the the relevant issues are more fundamentally topological. That may sound shocking: what could rubber geometry have to do with learning or inductive inference? The answer is that the set of empirically verifiable propositions over a set of possibilities automatically satisfies the axioms of a topological space over possible worlds. Once that is recognized, there is a systematic translation between topology and familiar concepts and issues in learning, statistics and the the philosophy of science. This seminar will introduce the relevant topological concepts and will explore the methodological correspondences in detail. Topics covered include Hume's problem of induction, the problem of non-refutable theories and paradigm choice, convergence to the truth, simplicity and Ockham's razor, statistical model selection, causal discovery, and computability. The class will place students at the cutting edge of research in this fresh and exciting new area, and will provide them with a high-level, explanatory perspective that unifies much of the detail encountered in standard statistics and machine learning curricula.
80-551 Seminar on History of Philosophy: Smith and Hume
Fall: 9 units
David Hume and Adam Smith are the two most famous and influential figures of a philosophical era called the Scottish enlightenment. They had significant influences on one another and on the development of philosophy and the social sciences. In this class we will read work by both of them on topics related to ethics and the social sciences, and trace some of those ideas to modern philosophical and scientific ideas.
80-595 Senior Thesis
Fall and Spring
Philosophy Department majors writing a senior thesis, and are not participating in the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program, are given the opportunity to engage in original research under the direction of an individual faculty member. Research topics are selected by student.

Faculty

JEREMY AVIGAD, Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; Carnegie Mellon, 1996–

STEVEN AWODEY, Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., University of Chicago; Carnegie Mellon, 1997–

ADAM BJORNDAHL, Associate Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., Cornell University; Carnegie Mellon, 2014–

CHRISTINA BJORNDAHL, Assistant Teaching Professor – Ph.D., Cornell University; Carnegie Mellon, 2014–

SIMON CULLEN, Assistant Teaching Professor – Ph.D., Princeton University; Carnegie Mellon, 2018–

ATOOSA KASIRZADEH, Assistant Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., University of Toronto; Carnegie Mellon, 2024–

KEVIN T. KELLY, Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh; Carnegie Mellon, 1985–

ALEX JOHN LONDON, K&L Gates Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies – Ph.D., University of Virginia; Carnegie Mellon, 2000–

KRZYSZTOF MIERZEWSKI, Assistant Professor – Ph.D., Stanford University; Carnegie Mellon, 2020–

AYDIN MOHSENI, Assistant Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., University of California, Irvine; Carnegie Mellon, 2024–

JOSEPH RAMSEY, Special Faculty and Director of Research Computing – Ph.D., University of California, San Diego; Carnegie Mellon, 2006–

RICHARD SCHEINES, Professor of Philosophy, The Bess Family Dean's Chair of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences – Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh; Carnegie Mellon, 1987–

TEDDY I. SEIDENFELD, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy and Statistics – Ph.D., Columbia University; Carnegie Mellon, 1985–

WILFRIED SIEG, Patrick Suppes Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., Stanford University; Carnegie Mellon, 1985–

MANDY SIMONS, Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., Cornell University; Carnegie Mellon, 1998–

JOEL SMITH, Distinguished Career Teaching Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh; Carnegie Mellon, 2000–

PETER L. SPIRTES, Professor of Philosophy, Marianna Brown Dietrich Professor and Head of Philosophy – Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh; Carnegie Mellon, 1987–

DANIELLE WENNER, Associate Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., Rice University; Carnegie Mellon, 2013–

THOMAS WERNER, Associate Teaching Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., Rutgers University; Carnegie Mellon, 2003–

WAYNE WU, Professor, Philosophy and the Neuroscience Institute – Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; Carnegie Mellon, 2010–

FRANCESCA ZAFFORA BLANDO, Assistant Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., Stanford University; Carnegie Mellon, 2020–

KUN ZHANG, Associate Professor of Philosophy – Ph.D., The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Carnegie Mellon, 2015–

KEVIN ZOLLMAN, Professor of Philosophy, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy and Social and Decision Sciences – Ph.D., University of California, Irvine; Carnegie Mellon, 2009–

Courtesy

FRANK PFENNING , Professor, Computer Science Department – Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University ; Carnegie Mellon, 2002–

VINCENT CONITZER, Professor, Computer Science Department – Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University; Carnegie Mellon, 2022–

Special Faculty

DERRICK GRAY, Special Faculty – Senior Lecturer – Ph.D., Rice University; Carnegie Mellon, 2013–

MARIO GÜNTHER, Visiting Assistant Professor – Ph.D., Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; Carnegie Mellon, 2024–

Emeriti Faculty

ROBERT CAVALIER, Teaching Professor (Emeritus) – Ph.D., Duquesne University; Carnegie Mellon, 1987–

CLARK GLYMOUR, Alumni University Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) – Ph.D., Indiana University; Carnegie Mellon, 1984–

DANA S. SCOTT, Hillman University Professor of Mathematical Logic, Computer Science and Philosophy (Emeritus) – Ph.D., Princeton University; Carnegie Mellon, 1981–

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