What is real? What can we know? What makes a just society? Is the mind the same as the brain? Do we have free will? Philosophy is the oldest and broadest intellectual tradition in Western civilization — the discipline from which science, mathematics, political theory, and psychology all emerged. To study philosophy is to grapple with the deepest questions that human beings have ever asked, and to learn the tools of rigorous reasoning that apply to every field of thought. This track introduces the major branches of philosophy — epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of mind — through the ideas of thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Rawls, and contemporary philosophers working on consciousness, AI, and language. Each module combines rich readings with diagrams, thought experiments, and quizzes that test both knowledge and reasoning. By the end, you will have a philosophical toolkit for thinking clearly about the questions that matter most.
The foundations of philosophical thinking: the Socratic method, the major branches of philosophy, and the basics of arguments and logic.
The birth of Western philosophy: the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato's Theory of Forms, and Aristotle's system of thought.
The theory of knowledge: what knowledge is, the debate between rationalism and empiricism, skepticism, and the Gettier problem.
The study of reality: substance, the mind-body problem, free will vs. determinism, and the puzzle of personal identity.
Consciousness, qualia, functionalism, the Chinese Room argument, and the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence.
The social contract tradition, Rawls's theory of justice, libertarianism, Marx, and the nature of political justice.
Philosophy of language, existentialism, phenomenology, and a capstone project integrating the major themes of the course.
Comprehensive assessment covering all modules of the Introduction to Philosophy track.
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