HPS graduate seminars 2027-2028
DW, 12-12-2025
This is provisional and subject to change. [H] indicates an elective seminar satisfying the History requirement.
Fall 2027
Jon Fuller: HPS 2740 / PHIL 2652 Philosophy of Psychiatry
This course examines conceptual, methodological, and some historical issues in psychiatry. General analyses of psychiatric disorders and classifications, and their reliability and validity, will lead to a consideration of the DSM and ICD. The function of etiological, reductive, and mechanical dimensions (including genetic and neuroimaging research) will be discussed. Historical topics include the contrast between and transition from psychoanalytical, narrative approaches to the rise of bio-chemical psychiatry. Extended consideration of schizophrenia and depressive disorder will be course themes. The seminar closes with a discussion of legal and ethical issues in psychiatry.
Edouard Machery: HPS 2505 Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science
This course will survey the main philosophical questions raised by cognitive science. Students will acquire a comprehensive grasp of the main issues in this field. We will discuss questions such as: Is the mind a computer? Are we rational? What is consciousness?
Sandy Mitchell: HPS 2649 Science and Values
The details of this seminar will be fixed closer to the date.
Paolo Palmieri: The History and Philosophy of Calculus (HPS 2522 Special Topics in History of Science) [H]
This seminar explores historical and philosophical questions concerning early calculus, its roots in the tradition of Greek mathematics and its coming of age in the early modern era. These questions include: Indivisibles quantities vs. infinitesimal quantities, the problem of tangents, fluxions vs. differentials, analysis/ synthesis, limits/ integration, discovery/ emergence/ justification in mathematics. We will place these questions in their larger historical contexts, focusing on their intellectual social, religious and esthetic dimensions, and read the relevant primary sources. The class has no requisites.
David Wallace: HPS 2101/ PHIL 2503 Philosophy of Science Core
This seminar is an intensive and advanced introduction to some of the main themes and problems in philosophy of science including the nature of evidence, theory comparison, and the theory-observation distinction, the meaning of theoretical terms, scientific explanation and scientific change.
Porter Williams: HPS 2826 / PHIL 2686 Philosophy of Quantum Field Theory
This course covers quantum field theory (QFT) and its applications in particle physics and beyond. Topics covered will vary but may include: algebraic and Lagrangian formulations of QFT; the Interpretation of effective field theories; the relation between particles and fields; spontaneous symmetry breaking; the gauge principle.
Spring 2028
Mike Dietrich: HPS 2270 / PHIL 2657 Philosophy of Biology
This seminar will consider foundational conceptual issues in biology including the nature and structure of biological explanation, the possibility of laws in biology and the relationship of biology to other sciences, natural kinds and the classification of species, teleology and biological function. In addition we will explore cutting edge topics of robustness in complex biological systems and the challenges raised for causal inference, emergence and multi-level organization as well as the relationship between unity of science and pluralism.
Marian Gilton: philosophy of physics seminar, details TBC
The details of this seminar will be fixed closer to the date, but are likely to include topics from some or all of gauge theory, effective field theory, and particle physics.
Kareem Khalifa: TBC
The details of this seminar will be fixed closer to the date.
John Norton: HPS 2814 Einstein [H]
This seminar covers Einstein's work in physics and his philosophical entanglements, with topics selected according to the interests of the seminar participants. Suitable topics include the papers of Einstein's annus mirabilis of 1905 (the special theory of relativity, e=mc2, the molecular account of Brownian motion and that light energy came in quanta), his discovery of general relativity and its development into modern cosmology and the theory of gravitational waves; his pursuit of a unified field theory; and his more general pronouncements in philosophy of science
Raphael Scholl: HPS 2103 History and Philosophy of Science Core
This course will consider the nature of integrated history and philosophy of science. Through key exemplars, we will critically explore different strategies for researching and writing history and philosophy of science.
Wayne Wu: The Science of Consciousness (HPS 2634 Special Topics in Philosophy of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science)
We will survey the science of consciousness as an approach to the philosophical problem of consciousness. We will ask how to properly leverage empirical work and consider the possibility that the problematic of consciousness as fixed in 20th Century philosophy might be the wrong one. We will consider alternative framings.