Department of Philosophy

The Department of Philosophy is closely associated with the Department of Gender and Social Justice our staff administrates both programs and many of our faculty teach in both areas. For more information on the Gender and Social Justice Department visit their website

Philosophy addresses some of the most fundamental and difficult questions there are, such as:

What is the nature of the human mind?
What makes knowledge trustworthy?
What are the standards of good reasoning?
What is a just society?
What is the best way to live?

Philosophy as an academic discipline attempts to answer these questions with a combination of creativity and analytical rigor.

Events

illustration of a COMPUTER IN A FRYING PAN

Thursday, July 31, 2025 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Eric Hochstein : Do we need to add special sauce to our pan?

Join us as we welcome Eric Hochstein, who will speak to us on pancomputationalism; the view that every system in nature (eg. galaxies, ecosystems,brains, digestive tracts, etc.) can be understood as a computational system. The talk is titled: Do we need to add special sauce to our pan?

News

Fall Courses 2025

A square filled with people with city hall in the background

Phil 324: Social and Political Philosophy

Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:30 pm - 3:50 pm

Political philosophers often regard government as a necessary evil, and their job is to figure out how on earth we could be okay with it. This course’s (few) historical readings help us understand why mainstream egalitarian theory is the way it is (warts and all). Critiques and alternatives help us assess its shortcomings while discussing disability, race, Indigeneity, and social structures more broadly. In-class discussion is emphasized. Come learn to entertain and befuddle your friends with such ideas as Hobbes’s leviathan, Locke’s provisos, Marx’s species-being, Rawls’s veil of ignorance, Kittay’s doulia, Nussbaum’s capabilities, Mills’s non-ideal theory, and Young’s blameless injustice.

A gorilla with it's hand on it's chin looking out into the distance

PHIL 356: Intelligence, in machines, humans, and other animals

Tuesdays and Thursdays 10 am - 11:20 am

Intelligence is the capacity to learn, understand, reason, act, and manage other mental functions. This course will examine intelligence from an interdisciplinary perspective, exploring what kinds of mental phenomena exist (from rudimentary intentionality exhibited by single-cell organisms to complex human cognition) and how various kinds of minds are physically realized and environmentally situated. One major focus will be human intelligence, especially in the context of linguistic communication, logico-mathematical reasoning, problem solving, decision-making, and creativity. But we will also examine non-human animal minds and artificial intelligence, with a special focus on recent developments in machine learning and artificial neural network design.

Department of Philosophy

Events

Eric Hochstein : Do we need to add special sauce to our pan?

News

Prof. Laura Mae Lindo wins award for outstanding performance

Recent UW MA graduate, Hannah Anderson, wins Mackenzie King Scholarship

Congratulations to Marco Tang