Fall 2025 course offerings
PHIL 673/675 — 001: Philosophy of Education: Tool of State or Tool for the Resistance
It is often assumed that education is the great equalizer. And yet, for far too many, access to education has been less than assured. For centuries, philosophers have considered the role education can and should play in society, questioning its purpose, its goals, and its methods. This course aims to bring into conversation centuries-old thoughts on why we teach what we teach and to whom we teach it with more recent thinking on liberatory pedagogies that resist, considering the long-standing social and political impacts of each. Using Black experiences of education as our guide, students will explore the Philosophy of Education through traditional academic readings, as well as more contemporary writings, making use of the short reflections, discussion facilitation, and academic essay writing activities to ground their learning.
PHIL 673/675 — 002: Feminist Philosophy of Science
In this course, students will explore research on objectivity, bias and values in science, the social nature of scientific research, and other central concepts in feminist philosophy of science. Students will use these concepts to investigate and evaluate scientific research on sex, sexuality, and race from policy relevant and socially relevant perspectives. Course content will focus on the work of Helen Longino, starting with her early and influential feminist research and ending with a forthcoming edited volume of new research, produced by an international group of philosophers, that extends and applies Longino’s philosophy to a wide range of topics. This course will run as a seminar. The professor will guide students through close readings and discussions of texts and mentor students while they develop and communicate their philosophical arguments and interpretations of this work. This course will be useful for students with a wide range of philosophical interests and career goals, including those interested in science and technology, ethics and social theory, and evidenced-based policy.
PHIL 680A — Academic Freedom
The Pro-Seminar has two components, professionalization and philosophical content. In the professionalization portion, we'll talk about things like how to navigate the graduate program, writing funding applications, giving talks, asking questions, how to be a helpful and successful philosopher, but also how to apply philosophical skills outside academia. Our philosophical focus will be on academic freedom, an always important but increasingly contentious notion. We will examine its history, its relationship to freedom of expression, how it is understood in various legal and academic contexts, and current debates related to academic freedom, both within and outside academia.
Winter 2026 course offerings
PHIL 673/675 — 001: Equality, Sufficiency, and Limit
In social and political philosophy, egalitarians oppose inequalities they argue are unfair, sufficientarians argue for an unconditional guarantee of a decent life for all, and limitarians explain why it is bad if some people have too much. What are the merits of each view? Are they competitors or complementary? What are the key objections, including relational critiques?
PHIL 673/675 — 002: Fairness and Anti-Discrimination in AI
This course focuses on fairness and anti-discrimination in the context of algorithms and AI. Some forms of algorithmic discrimination arise even when algorithms have no access to information about features such as gender and race; this may happen because correlations in the data due to existing inequities lead to discriminatory outcomes. For example, if those in oppressed groups face discrimination in hiring and promotion, hiring algorithms may predict they will be less successful; on this basis, they may be less likely to be hired, leading to further oppression. Informally, it is said that algorithms "bake in" background social injustice. Through readings from philosophers, legal theorists, computer scientists, and others, we will consider how philosophical views of fairness and oppression apply to these contexts, how algorithmic unfairness and discrimination have been or should be defined, and how algorithmic oppression could be addressed and eliminated.
PHIL 680 B — Academic Freedom (continued)
The Pro-Seminar has two components, professionalization and philosophical content. In the professionalization portion, we'll talk about things like how to navigate the graduate program, writing funding applications, giving talks, asking questions, how to be a helpful and successful philosopher, but also how to apply philosophical skills outside academia. Our philosophical focus will be on academic freedom, an always important but increasingly contentious notion. We will examine its history, its relationship to freedom of expression, how it is understood in various legal and academic contexts, and current debates related to academic freedom, both within and outside academia.
Need help or have a question? Please contact Ashley Price, Philosophy Graduate Coordinator.
Fall 2026
PHIL 680A — Idealization
This course will consider idealization and related concepts from a range of normative and epistemological perspectives. In scientific reasoning, idealizations may be necessary for modelling complex systems, but may also function differently depending on context. For example, is the economic representation of persons as self-interested maximizers of their own utility a harmless idealization or a dangerous misrepresentation? In social and political theory, debates over ideal theory concern the potential hazards of idealizing away phenomena of crucial importance. For example, does a method of ideal theory in political philosophy risk ignoring oppression, just where oppression should be centred? Some contested use of algorithms and AI in social decision-making can also be understood in light of idealization, as often these uses replace complex decision methods with processes based on maximizing a single quantifiable objective function. This course also has a professionalization component, which will consist of a mix of preparation for navigating professional spaces in philosophy and development of academic skills.
PHIL 673 — 001: Philosophy of Applied Mathematics
The question of how mathematics relates to reality is an old philosophical question. We will begin by considering answers to this question provided by accounts within philosophy of mathematics, such as Pythagoreanism, structuralism, and naturalism. We will then turn to the question of how mathematics relates to the world that we perceive with our senses. Theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner infamously argued that “[t]he miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.” We will take Wigner’s argument that the application of mathematics in science is miraculous and unreasonable as a challenge. What is the reasonable explanation for our success in applying mathematics? What does this explanation tell us about the nature of logical, mathematical and scientific knowledge? How (if at all) does applied mathematics succeed in describing the world? The course will include topics from epistemology, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. This course is suitable for students with a background in either philosophy, mathematics, or science; no specialized background knowledge is required.
PHIL 673 — 002: Social Justice and Philosophy of Language
This course uses the tools of philosophy of language to consider social justice issues related to communication. Students will apply these theoretical tools to real-world topics of interest to them. Topics may include gendered language, the role of language in oppression, linguistic manipulation, and the language of resistance.
Winter 2027
PHIL 680B — Idealization
This course will consider idealization and related concepts from a range of normative and epistemological perspectives. In scientific reasoning, idealizations may be necessary for modelling complex systems, but may also function differently depending on context. For example, is the economic representation of persons as self-interested maximizers of their own utility a harmless idealization or a dangerous misrepresentation? In social and political theory, debates over ideal theory concern the potential hazards of idealizing away phenomena of crucial importance. For example, does a method of ideal theory in political philosophy risk ignoring oppression, just where oppression should be centred? Some contested use of algorithms and AI in social decision-making can also be understood in light of idealization, as often these uses replace complex decision methods with processes based on maximizing a single quantifiable objective function. This course also has a professionalization component, which will consist of a mix of preparation for navigating professional spaces in philosophy and development of academic skills.
PHIL 673 — 001: Post-war Justice and Human Rights
There’s no shortage of wars right now, and no shortage of difficult problems regarding how they might finish. How should wars end? How to fulfill human rights during the transition from war to peace? This seminar will robustly blend political theory, international law, and the history of armed conflict, looking at gripping cases ranging from the two world wars thru Iraq and Afghanistan, with special attention paid to such current cases as Syria, Israel-Gaza, and Russia-Ukraine. The course also offers deeper philosophical reflection on: overcoming trauma; war crimes (and punishment thereof); the complex dynamic between justice, security, and peace; and the meaning of social reconstruction and human rights realization during the aftermath of war and beyond.