The School of Human Inquiry · philosophy, history & belief
Philosophy & Ethics
The oldest questions — what exists, what we can know, what we owe each other — treated as live problems, not museum pieces.
What exists, what can be known, and how to live — the opening questions, taken seriously from the first page.
The three great answers to the question of what we owe each other, tested against hard cases.
Syllabus · 5 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — The Question of Right
Moral intuitions and where they conflict · Relativism and its costs · Describing versus prescribing
Unit II — Consequences
Classical utilitarianism · Measuring welfare · The trolley and the transplant · Rule utilitarianism as a repair
Unit III — Duty and Respect
Kant's categorical imperative · Persons as ends, never merely means · Lying, promising, and consent
Unit IV — Character
Aristotle's virtues and the mean · Practical wisdom · Moral education and habit
Unit V — Ethics Applied
Bioethics at the bedside · Duties to distant strangers · The ethics of intelligent machines
Two centuries of Greek thought that set the terms for the next twenty-four.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — Before Socrates
The Milesians ask what things are made of · Heraclitus and constant change · Parmenides against change · Zeno's paradoxes
Unit II — Socrates and Plato
The Socratic method · The trial and death of Socrates · Plato's theory of Forms · The Republic on justice
Unit III — Aristotle
Substance and the four causes · The soul as a set of capacities · The Nicomachean Ethics · The Lyceum and the organization of knowledge
Unit IV — After Aristotle
Epicurean calm · Stoic discipline · Skeptic suspension of judgment
What a mind is, whether a machine could have one, and why the question got harder just as it got urgent.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~22 hours
Unit I — The Problem
Dualism and its difficulties · Behaviorism · The identity theory
Unit II — Functionalism and Its Critics
Minds as programs · Searle's Chinese Room · Qualia and the knowledge argument
Unit III — Consciousness
The hard problem stated carefully · Attention and access · Animal minds and other minds
Unit IV — Machine Minds
The Turing test reconsidered · Large language models and the question of thought · Moral status of artificial agents
Why states exist, what makes them just, and when disobedience is the right answer.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — Why the State
Hobbes and the state of nature · Locke on property and consent · Rousseau's general will
Unit II — Justice
Rawls behind the veil of ignorance · Nozick's reply from liberty · Equality of what, exactly
Unit III — Liberty
Mill's harm principle · Positive and negative liberty · Speech and its limits
Unit IV — Standing Questions
Civil disobedience from Thoreau to King · Global justice and borders · Why democracy, argued rather than assumed