Fields

With a few exceptions (the History of Philosophy sequence 25000/26000/27000 and Elementary Logic), the courses listed in the College catalogue are assigned an upper-case letter A or B which follows the course description. This letter indicates which of the two principal areas or fields of philosophy the course belongs to:

A = Practical Philosophy (ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics). Courses in this area focus on such topics as the nature and justification of moral requirements, social justice and political legitimacy, the character of aesthetic judgment, and the nature of representation in art.

B = Theoretical Philosophy (philosophy of science and mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology). Courses in this area focus on the fundamental categories involved in our understanding of the world (causation, substance and change, universals and particulars, the nature of mind), the character and basis of human knowledge, the criteria and goals of scientific explanation, the relation between theory and evidence, and the nature of mathematical knowledge and proof.

The primary function of the field designation is to enable majors and minors to determine which courses satisfy their "distribution requirement" (see below). But this system is also helpful in indicating the focus of some of the courses where this may not be readily apparent, as for example in courses dealing with historical figures or movements.

Every year a number of different courses are given in each of these two principal areas of philosophy. The Department is committed to ensuring a wide variety in its undergraduate course offerings.