As the restrictions imposed on us by the pandemic ease, we look forward to welcoming more students back on campus. From Trimester 1 2023, more of our courses will be delivered (at least partly) in-person to ensure we can offer you the best learning experience through workshops, field trips, placements, labs, and face-to-face tutorials and lectures. When you enrol for 2023, be sure to check what modes are available for your chosen course(s).
Showing 58 courses for the subject Philosophy
Great Ideas
FHSS103
Great Ideas is a course reflecting on some of the most exciting, important and revolutionary ideas that have shaped society and culture as it is today. It also considers how those ideas have an ongoing influence. It’s an interdisciplinary course look...
Minds, Brains and Persons
PHIL104
This course is an introduction to philosophical questions about the nature of minds and how they relate to brains and persons. Topics may include: What is consciousness? What can science tell us about the mind? What is a person? In virtue of what do ...
The Big Questions
PHIL105
This course considers some of the most difficult questions about life, the universe, and everything. Possible topics: What is the meaning of life? Would it be good to live forever? Can we ever know anything with certainty? Does God exist? What is hum...
Contemporary Ethical Issues
PHIL106
An introduction to issues in applied ethics. Topics may include: the morality of the death penalty, war, cloning, abortion and euthanasia, and the moral status of non-human animals.
This course approaches mental health and mental disorder from various disciplinary perspectives. It considers definitions of mental disorder, representations of mental illness in film and literature, cultural and scientific conceptions of the healthy...
Philosophy of Media and the Arts
PHIL107
An introduction to the philosophy of art, focusing on philosophical issues concerning popular culture, film, fiction, music and the visual arts.
Critical Thinking
PHIL123
PHIL 123 is offered over January and February 2024 (which is part of the 2023 academic year). This course provides an introduction to the theory of critical thinking. It will focus on the more practical aspect of critical thinking: Rational Choice Th...
Knowledge and Reality
PHIL201
This course will consist of a survey of contemporary metaphysics (reality) and epistemology (the theory of knowledge). Questions to be discussed may include: What is knowledge? How are beliefs justified? When should we believe something on the basis ...
Ethics
PHIL202
This course is an examination of the 20th century approaches to ethics. Topics that may be discussed include: What is the nature of ethics and morality? Are our ethical judgments systematically mistaken? How and why have we evolved to make moral judg...
Asian Philosophy
PHIL204
This course is an introduction to classical Asian philosophy, with a focus on views about ethics, political philosophy, education, and human nature.
The Future of Work
FHSS207
Workforces are changing at a rapid pace with various predictions regarding the future nature of work. In this interdisciplinary course, students will critically examine the changing nature of the work and employment from a range of perspectives inclu...
Special Topic: Metaphysics
PHIL209
The course examines some of the toughest questions about the nature of reality, including questions about the nature of time, free will, causation, and what objects really are.
Special Topic: Ethical Theory
PHIL210
An examination of the foundations of ethics. What is distinctive about moral language? Are moral properties real? Are our moral judgements justified (and if so how)? Topics related to moral psychology and the evolution of moral cognition may also be ...
Introduction to Logic
PHIL211
An introduction to the analysis of arguments using the methods of symbolic logic. Students are introduced to the use of techniques such as truth tables, trees and natural deduction to test arguments for validity.
This course surveys the historical and philosophical development of international relations theory and political theory. It will examine foundational texts drawn from thinkers across the range of western political theory, from ancient Greece to the t...
Ethics and International Affairs
PHIL264
This course examines important topics at the intersection of international relations and moral philosophy, including: just-war theory, humanitarian aid and intervention, nationalism, immigration, historical injustice, human rights and climate change....
Mind and Cognition
PHIL265
This course explores the nature of the mental by investigating accounts of the mind and cognition. Topics that may be discussed include the relationship between the mind and the body, consciousness, perception, intentionality, and mental content.
Great Philosophers
PHIL267
This course covers western philosophy from the presocratic thinkers, through Plato adn Aristotle, and then passing to the modern period to cover Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Reid.
Philosophy of Popular Culture
PHIL268
This course presents a series of contemporary philosophical controversies and questions raised by art and culture.
Data Ethics
PHIL269
Data ethics is a new branch of ethics. Students who enrol in this course will study new and emerging ethical problems related to data (including generation, recording, curation, processing, dissemination, sharing and use), algorithms (including artif...
Ethical Theory
PHIL302
An examination of the foundations of ethics. What is distinctive about moral language? Are moral properties real? Are our moral judgements justified (and if so how)? Topics related to moral psychology and the evolution of moral cognition may also be ...
This course examines major positions and issues in contemporary political philosophy, including questions about rights, equality, justice, freedom, and democracy. This course is also able to be taken towards a major in POLS. See major requirements fo...
Mathematical Logic
MATH309
An introduction to the semantics and proof theory of symbolic languages, explaining the role of logic in describing mathematical structures and formalising reasoning about them. Topics covered include propositional logic, first-order logic of quantif...
Special Topic: Data Ethics
PHIL309
Data ethics is a new branch of ethics. Students who enrol in this course will study new and emerging ethical problems related to data (including generation, recording, curation, processing, dissemination, sharing and use), algorithms (including artif...
This course addresses a variety of challenges to predicting and preparing for the future. It takes an essentially interdisciplinary approach, drawing on a wide variety of sources of information about the future. Among its focuses are the biases that ...
This course introduces students to the thought of the existentialist school of the 20th Century, such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. We will discuss the ideas of these thinkers both in relation to their o...
Philosophy of the Arts
PHIL313
This course will examine a series of contemporary philosophical issues concerning what art is, whether there are objective standards of taste, objective aesthetic properties, when works of art start and finish, collaborations and art, morality and ar...
Philosophy of Science
PHIL318
This course surveys the issues and positions in modern philosophy of science, beginning with a discussion of the history of philosophy of science from Logical Positivism to the present. We then discuss particular problems such as the problem of induc...
Metaphysics
PHIL325
The course examines some of the toughest questions about the nature of reality, including questions about the nature of time, free will, causation, and what objects really are.
Language and the World
PHIL331
This course examines the conceptual development of the theories of meaning and reference to the present. We discuss the problem of interpreting what others say and the role of context in the understanding of language.
Logic
PHIL335
This course covers central systems of extra-classical and non-classical (or 'deviant') logic. A selection of the following logics will be studied in this course: temporal logic, modal logic, intuitionist logic, relevant logic and many-valued logic.
Bioethics
PHIL361
This course will introduce students to some central questions in bioethics. Topics covered may include the ethical issues associated with assisted reproduction, severely disabled newborns, euthanasia, informed consent, human cloning, stem cell therap...
This course enables students to engage deeply with a broad range of feminist thought. We will first focus on feminist critiques of social/political institutions, then on feminist prescriptions, and finally look at the means feminists have suggested f...
Paradoxes
PHIL371
This course studies a variety of paradoxes and contemporary philosophical responses to them. Paradoxes to be discussed may include: Zeno’s paradoxes, the Sorites paradox, Newcombs’ paradox, prisoners’ dilemma, the surprise examination paradox, and th...
Experimental Philosophy
PHIL373
This course will survey and critique the new and emerging field of experimental philosophy. This will include looking at some of the ways in which empirical methods have been brought to bear on philosophical questions in areas such as epistemology, p...
Philosophy of Law
PHIL375
This course is a comprehensive examination of jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. Questions that may be discussed are: What is a law? From where do laws derive their authority? What is the relationship between the law, ethics and morality? 100% ...
Pre-honours Seminar
PHIL389
This course will (1) introduce students to theoretical questions about the nature of philosophy and the sub-discipline known as metaphilosophy, (2) teach students practical skills to enhance their ability to do research in philosophy, and (3) support...
This course examines topics at the intersection of philosophy, politics and economics. Topics may include: social choice theory, rational choice theory, economic history, value theory, the politics of global finance, global governance, and comparativ...
Approaches to Microeconomics
PHPE402
This course gives students an in depth knowledge of the principles of microeconomics and their application.
Approaches to Macroeconomics
PHPE403
This course gives students an in depth knowledge of the principles of macroeconomics and their application.
Students will undertake an approved, supervised course of study relating to economics and complementing their work in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics programme.
Directed Individual Study
PHIL420
Students will undertake an approved, supervised course of study relating to philosophy and complementing their work in the Honours Degree within the Philosophy programme.
Formal Logic
PHIL421
This course will be an introduction to standard model and proof theory.
Philosophical Logic
PHIL422
This course will be an in-depth discussion of one or more problems in contemporary philosophical logic. Topics will change from year to year, but they may include vagueness, theories of truth, modal logic applied to problems in philosophy, or the phi...
Metaphysics and Epistemology
PHIL441
This course considers questions about the fundamental nature of reality and what we can know and justifiably believe about it.
Language and Mind
PHIL442
This course considers questions about how our thoughts and language can represent the world.
Value Theory
PHIL443
This course will consider closely some topics in moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion.
Advanced Ethics
PHIL444
This course examines contemporary debates in philosophy about the fundamental moral principles that govern and constrain human behaviour.
This course examines topics that continue to shape and influence contemporary western analytic philosophy.
New Books in Philosophy
PHIL446
This course will involve students closely reading and critically evaluating two recently published monographs in philosophy.
Special Topic:
PHIL447
Political Philosophy
PHIL449
This course is an in-depth survey of central and fundamental questions in political philosophy. It will consider concepts such as politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and authority. It will ask what these concepts mean and why they are ...
Research Project
PHIL489
This course gives students the opportunity to pursue an individual research project with guidance and support from a supervisor. Regular supervision is arranged with the supervisor, and signed off by Philosophy's Coordinator of Graduate Studies.
Research Project
PHPE589
This course gives students the opportunity to pursue an individual research project relating to an aspect of the PPE programme. Students will be given guidance and support from a supervisor. Regular supervision is arranged with the supervisor, and si...
This course builds on the skills and knowledge gained through Part 1 of the PPE programme. It provides students with the opportunity of gaining direct insights into the workings of government, ministries or related workplaces. Placements will be orga...
Thesis
PHIL591
MA thesis in Philosophy.
Dissertation
PHPE593
This course gives students the opportunity to pursue an individual research project relating to an aspect of the PPE programme. Students will be given guidance and support from a supervisor. Regular supervision is arranged with the supervisor and sig...
Philosophy for PhD
PHIL690
Showing results 1 - 58 of 58 results
Showing 1 - 58 of 58 results for Philosophy