2024 Summer Courses in Philosophy
Enrollment is open for UCLA summer courses. Current UCLA Students can enroll at MyUCLA. Visiting students can register at summer.ucla.edu.
Session A: June 24 – August 2
Philos 6 - Introduction to Political Philosophy
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Jacob Chen
This course is an introduction to political philosophy. We will focus on two questions about social/political justice: 1) Should a just society give precedence to liberty or equality? and 2) How should property, income, and opportunity be fairly distributed in a just society? The two main philosophers we will read are John Rawls and Robert Nozick—a liberal egalitarian and a libertarian, respectively. Understanding their views will give you a good foundational understanding of two major opposing political outlooks in today’s society. In addition to Rawls and Nozick, however, we will also read some works by David Hume, G.A. Cohen, and Charles Mills.
Philos 7 - Introduction to Philosophy of Mind
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Alonso Reategui Molina
In this class we will discuss classical topics in philosophy of mind. There will be many questions that we consider. Here are a few:
Is the mind the same as your brain?
Is the mind a physical entity or something distinct?
Can computers think? Are they conscious?
How do we know others are conscious?
How do we know our minds?
We will review and evaluate the classic answers to these and other fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind. Our goal will be to gain a solid understanding of what a mind is. We will discuss several prominent philosophical positions on the nature of the mind, from dualism, a position that claims that the mental and the physical are two radically different kinds of things, to functionalism, a position that claims that what makes something a mental state depends on its functioning and not on its internal constitution. After getting a sense of what theorists have said about the nature of the mind, we’ll move on to think about introspection and how we know our own minds, if at all.
Philos 31 - Logic, First Course
Instructor: Tristen Cardwell
This is a first course in symbolic logic. Symbolic logic is an extremely helpful tool which allows its user to identify the underlying structure of a sentence or argument, which in turn allows its user to better evaluate how good or trustworthy that structure is. In a world where argumentation is the main currency of reasoning, training in symbolic logic thus gives one a significant advantage. Naturally, logic also has important applications beyond philosophy, such as in programming and linguistics. In this course we will focus on developing foundational skills in the two most prominent basic logics today, i.e. propositional logic and predicate logic.
Philos C119 - Topics in History of Philosophy: Being with Others in a Mad World
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Jae Choe
This course will examine accounts of “self” and, to a lesser extent, “identity”. Who are you? Are you a soul or collection of memories? An amalgamation of identities or traits? This course will drive towards a picture whereby the questions “who are you?” and “who am I?” are interdependent: who I am crucially depends on who you are and vice versa. This interdependence potentially generates a moral obligation between persons, which explains why questions of self and identity matter beyond individualistic existential concerns. Indeed, there may be no such thing as a purely individual concern in the first place.
To arrive at this destination, we’ll draw from the Western canon as well as material from Eastern traditions and contemporary social sciences. In canvassing various accounts of self, questions abound: Is self a historically situated notion? What is the role of the “other” in determining oneself? What is the relation between self-knowledge and living authentically? Finally, time permitting, implications for contemporary identity ethics will be addressed.
Philos 166 - Philosophy of Law: The Epistemology of Legal Practice
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Mikaela Mackenzie
The epistemology of legal practice, or legal epistemology, has exploded in recent years. There has been a lot of debate amongst philosophers and legal scholars surrounding the use of statistical evidence in legal proceedings. This debate has prompted discussions regarding the legal value of epistemic concepts such as sensitivity and knowledge and how such concepts may apply to evidential standards and legal proof. In this course, we will discuss some of the key threads in this debate. We will begin by discussing some of the literature on the problem of mere statistical evidence. We will then discuss some new and exciting literature in legal epistemology on the use of emerging technologies such as algorithms and artificial intelligence. We will conclude by discussing whether the law should care about epistemology.
Philos M187 - Topics in Feminist Philosophy: Metaphysics and Epistemology: Feminist Approaches to Knowledge and Science
Instructor: Alexandra Pelaez
What is the relationship between gender and knowledge? What is gender? How, if at all, does gender influence our practices of inquiry and justification? We critically examine the concepts of gender, gender identity, race, and sexual orientation. We explore the implications of these concepts for feminist projects. We discuss how gender, race, and class are entwined with capitalist structures, state power, and democracy. We consider the costs of failing to include traditionally marginalized voices in our theorizing, and we consider whether this exclusion is a form of ‘epistemic injustice.’
Session C: August 5 – September 13
Philos 3 - Historical Introduction to Philosophy
*ONLINE COURSE – ASYNCHRONOUS LECTURES*
Instructor: Carlos Gutierrez
Course Description TBA
Syllabus TBA
Philos 7 - Introduction to Philosophy of Mind
Instructor: Xinyu (James) Gu
We will make our way through some central issues in the contemporary philosophy of mind. Special attention will be given to the following topics:
Nature of the mind
What sort of thing is the mind? Is the mind an immaterial substance that is in principle separable from the body? Is the mind and its states identical to the brain and its processes? Or is the mind a particular kind of computing machine physically realized in the brain?
Being about the world
Folk psychology and everyday talk would have us believe that most of our mental states are contentful in the sense that they represent the external world as being a certain way. But what determines the content of our mental states? Is it determined by what goes on inside of our minds? Or is it determined by our causal relations with the world?
Extended mind
Conventional wisdom has it that the mind is confined to the boundaries of skin and skull. But is there any reason for believing this? Are there, for instance, any good reasons for thinking that your mobile phone also constitutes a part of your mind?
Philos 22 - Introduction to Ethical Theory
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Sahiba Sindhu
This is a course in an introduction to ethics. Therefore, we will read two classic texts in the history of ethics, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, to answer the question: “what should I do if I want to be moral?” Aristotle does not write about morality, but he writes about how a person becomes who they are and the conditions that make it possible for them to do this. Kant, in contrast, is a philosopher of morality who writes about why morality takes the form of moral obligation, the source of these obligations, and how meeting these obligations makes it so that I can be moral.
Reading the two texts together will position us to figure out how morality becomes a part of who a person is, why it would be desirable to become this kind of person, and how being in a relationship is, at once, the source of, and by the same token, an impediment to, the possibility of being moral. We will close the course by reading excerpts from Kant’s philosophy of community (from Religion within the limits of bare reason) and Hannah Arendt’s theory of action (from The Human Condition). Both of these texts address the nature of relationships between people. We will juxtapose these texts against what we have learned about moral character from Aristotle and Kant in order to consider the idea of a relationship between people that bears a moral character.
Philos C127A- Philosophy of Language: Language as a Public Manifestation of Thought
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Nefeli Ralli
What makes a series of sounds into a meaningful sentence? What is the connection between words and the objects in the world to which they refer? What is the relationship between words and thoughts in our head? Is the truth of our utterances determined by the world or by social conventions? This course will introduce you to the ways in which philosophers have attempted to provide us with answers to these types of questions.
These questions have been asked since antiquity, and we will trace their starting point in Plato’s philosophy. However, a systematic examination of these questions emerged in twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Some lamented and some lauded this shift of focus to language; nevertheless, understanding the central issues in the philosophy of language is indispensable for engaging with contemporary analytic philosophy. A key part of this development is a famous puzzle introduced by Frege, which we will explore in depth. Hesperus, the evening star, is in fact identical to Phosphorus, the morning star. But not everyone knows this. So, some might believe that Hesperus is Hesperus without accepting that Hesperus is Phosphorus. How can this be? If Hesperus and Phosphorus are one and the same, should they not share all properties? And if they do, then does not this include the property of being believed to be a certain way?
Philos 173 - Philosophy of Medicine
Instructor: Colleen Hanson
As an institution, medicine provides a remarkable and crucial role in our ability to live well. It seems, however, that medicine’s capacity to help us live well depends on how we conceive of what it means to be in an optimal state of well being. What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be ill?
This course is an intensive introduction to some key ideas and arguments in the philosophy of medicine. We begin with some readings about how to define health and disease. We will study various concepts of health and disease, including naturalistic, normative, and phenomenological theories. We will evaluate these health and disease theories using mental health, addiction, and pregnancy, about which there are controversies whether they can be regarded as diseases. Finally, we will turn to readings that will help us consider how various theories of health and disease might frame our decisions about enhancement and disability. Throughout the course we will be attending to the ways in which our discussions have an impact on minority populations.
Philos 177A - Existentialism: On Being Authentic
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Jungsuk Lee
It is familiar advice to be oneself or be true to oneself – i.e. to lead one’s life authentically. But authenticity as an ethical ideal, while intuitive, is quite elusive. To grasp it better, we will study the philosophical views of some central figures from the Existentialist tradition in which it grew and evolved. The views we explore are those of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre ( together with Simone de Beauvoir if time permits). In examining their views, we want not only to understand authenticity better but also more generally the conceptual terrain to which it belongs. This nexus of related topics and issues that we will discuss include: the self-transcending structure of the human self, faith and limits of rationality, human sociality as a fundamental condition for both authenticity and inauthenticity, and the way anxiety is taken to reveal the possibility of a fundamental kind of freedom/authenticity.
Philos 179 - Asian Philosophy: Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy
*ONLINE COURSE*
Instructor: Kyle Scott
This is an introduction to Buddhist philosophy, extending from its origins (as preserved in the early sūtra literature), down through its evolution into multiple competing philosophical traditions (Theravāda, Madhyamaka, Ch’an, Zen, and so on). We will explore Buddhist approaches to issues in epistemology, metaphysics, personal identity, philosophy of mind, and ethics. One theme running through the course will be radical skepticism; we will explore how Buddhist philosophers questioned not only the existence of an enduring or essential self but also the existence of an external (mind-independent) world, and how their analyses impacted their understandings of meaning in language and their accounts of the nature and function of consciousness. We will also spend significant time on Buddhist ethics and the reception of Buddhism in the West.