Students are responsible for all material discussed either in class or in discussion sections. Therefore attendance is mandatory. Several short writing assignments during the quarter and a final examination. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are the philosophers we will discuss, and the particular topics we will discuss include perception, the limits and the justification of knowledge, substance, causality, secondary qualities, free will, personal identity, and the existence of God. Scientific creationism is the view that scientific evidence supports the Biblical story of creation more strongly than it does evolutionary theory.
Evolutionary biologists argue that such claims are pseudo-scientific nonsense.
Sociobiology is the view that evolutionary explanations can be provided for the social and psychological characteristics of human beings, the way that they can for all other organisms. Two tests during the quarter and a final exam. This course will begin with discussions of female identity. In the second half of the course, we will discuss how the complex issues of women's identity manifest themselves in politics. We will thus focus on political issues such as pornography and equal rights.