*Subject to change without notice.
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PHIL 700-01 – Seminar in Selected Problems (Philosophy of Love) (3 units)
Monday 3:30 – 6:15 P.M.
Macy Salzberger
“Philosophers are, perhaps, never quite so ridiculous as when we subject tenderly cherished human values and emotions to the microscope of analytic scrutiny, I now venture to do just that.”
~Marilyn Friedman, “Romantic Love and Personal Autonomy”
In this course, we will discuss what it means to love, why, and when, love is valuable, and what it means to love well. The course includes lecture, student presentations, and course discussion. Course requirements include active participation, presentations, journal reflections, short papers, and a term paper.
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PHIL 715-01 – Seminar in Philosophical Writing (3 units)
Thursday 12:30 – 3:15 P.M.
Arezoo Islami
Philosophy is an activity we engage in with others; it is a practice of reason. One aim of this course is to help you become more skillful writers and readers of philosophy, as well as more committed and compassionate philosophers. Another aim is to support you in creating and sustaining an inclusive community that engages constructively, respectfully, and professionally—aligned with the values of our department. Course topics will include: how to edit effectively; how to plan papers; how to move from an idea to a term paper to a thesis; how to cite, paraphrase, and quote properly; how to make technical discussions accessible to your reader; how to develop a clear and engaging writing style; how to prepare a research bibliography; how to find relevant conferences; and how to prepare and deliver effective presentations.
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PHIL 718-01 – Teaching Philosophy (1 unit)
The class will meet online 3:00-4:00 PM on the following Fridays: August 29, September 12, September 26, October 10, October 24, November 14, and December 5. Please check the Canvas page for a Zoom link.
Questions? Email Dr. Arezoo Islami at arezooi@sfsu.edu
This course will focus on developing participants’ theoretical and practical approaches to pedagogy, with an emphasis on philosophical pedagogy. As part of the course, participants will reflect on what the aims of philosophical education in institutions of higher education are and what they should be. Participants will also reflect on how those aims can be realized across different institutional contexts and with different pedagogical practices. Through this course, participants will learn to identify how the aims of philosophical education are being met in their own studies and develop the skills necessary to promote the aims of philosophical education in classrooms they lead as instructors.
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PHIL 770-01 – Seminar in a Classical Author (Foucault on Care of the Self) (3 units)
Tuesday 12:30 – 3:15 P.M.
Mohammad Azadpur
This course examines Michel Foucault’s later ethical turn and his concern with the importance of ancient philosophical spiritual exercises as “arts of existence” or “techniques of the self.” We will read Foucault’s History of Sexuality and his related articles and interviews. We begin by considering pertinent aspects of the modern history of ethics in order to situate his contributions. We then assess Foucault’s later project by a treatment of relevant secondary literature, including material by philosophers such as Pierre Hadot, Charles Taylor, Alexander Nehamas, Arnold Davidson, Martha Nussbaum, and Hans Sluga. We end with an examination of Foucault’s foray into political journalism in the light of his later concern with ethics. Thematically, this course introduces students to pioneering contemporary discussions that challenge the modern conceptions of philosophical activity and provide opportunities for innovative responses to some of the important political, ethical and meta-ethical questions.
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PHIL 770-02 – Seminar in a Classical Author (Sellars) (3 units)
Thursday 9:30 – 12:15 P.M.
David Landy
Wilfrid Sellars is the twentieth century’s greatest philosophical thinker. His philosophical system is broad in scope, rich in detail, deep in its internal interconnectedness, and wide in its influence. This course will be a structured introduction to that system. We will investigate topics such as meaning and cognitive content, the relation of language to thought, scientific reasoning and theoretical representation, and the nature of human experience of the world. The course will include reading his most well know work, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” in which he argues against what he dubbed the Myth of the Given, and his detailed engagement with Kant’s philosophical system, Science and Metaphysics, in which he argues that our representation of the natural world is an essentially rule-governed practice that commits us both to conceiving of truth as that which would be represented by scientists at the end of inquiry and to conceiving the experiencing subject as first and foremost the unified subject of practical reasoning.
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PHIL 795-01 – Early Modern Philosophy (Early Modern Philosophy & Colonialism) (3 units)
Monday 12:30 – 3:15 P.M.
Alice Sowaal
Study of the early modern period (roughly 1500-1800) through the lens of European colonialism (and related issues, i.e., slavery) and its impact on the colonized. Focus will be on one or more of these questions: What were the views of early modern philosophers and/or abolitionists who argued against and/or actively resisted European colonial powers? What did canonical philosophers (e.g., Descartes, Hume, Kant) say about colonialism and/or slavery. How do 20th and 21st century thinkers theorize the problems and impact of early modern European coloniality and/or the methods of decoloniality?
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PHIL 828-01 – Philosophical Issues in Artificial Intelligence (3 units)
Tuesday 3:30 – 6:15 P.M.
Carlos Montemayor
This course will cover the implications of artificial intelligence for policy, industry, and society at large, including issues concerning social justice. The main question of the course is, in what sense is artificial intelligence “artificial” and “intelligent.” We will explore this issue through the relation of two fundamental capacities of the human mind: phenomenal consciousness and attention. Ethical issues are normative, and the question of how phenomenal consciousness and attention relate to normativity will be analyzed in detail, in the context of analogous questions regarding artificial intelligence.
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PHIL 851-01 – Feminist Ethics & Political Philosophy (3 units)
Wednesday 9:30 – 12:15 P.M.
Shelley Wilcox
This seminar will explore several cutting-edge themes, ideas, and debates in contemporary feminist ethics and political philosophy. In particular, we will examine recent work by feminist philosophers and other cultural critics on several interrelated, normative concepts, such as oppression, white supremacy, misogyny, objectification, representation, and epistemic justice. In addition to gaining a thorough understanding of these concepts, we will assess their usefulness for diagnosing and theorizing a number of pressing, present-day issues, such as state violence, toxic public discourse, attacks on reproductive rights, sexual assault and victim blaming, body image and fatphobia, misogynoir, transphobia, and willful epistemic ignorance. We will round out the course by discussing various forms of resistance to injustice, focusing on epistemic activism, solidarity, and care.
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PHIL 890-01 – Seminar: Current Issue in Philosophy (Science and the Self) (3 units)
Thursday 4:00 – 6:15 P.M.
Arezoo Islami
Philosophers have long been skeptical of psychotherapeutic schools like psychoanalysis and psychodynamics, often dismissing them as pseudoscience. This criticism has, over time, permeated public perception, presenting a contrast to today’s growing emphasis on mental health and the widely accepted healing benefits of psychotherapy.
In this course, rather than accepting conventional views, we critically examine what it means for a field to be considered scientific, exploring whether philosophy’s skepticism toward psychotherapy might have been misplaced. We aim to engage deeply with both the philosophical foundations and diverse methodologies that shape the practice of psychotherapy, evaluating its approaches through the lens of philosophy of science.