Program Overview
Philosophy
Think carefully, critically, and with clarity.
Photo credit: Matthew Lester
Ask Fundamental Questions about the World
The department hosts the Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy, an internationally renowned and diverse speaker series introducing Oberlin students to a wide array of philosophical approaches.
Philosophy in the Schools
As part of professor Katherine Thomson-Jones’s community-based course, students lead philosophical discussions with elementary school children. The program helps to build essential reasoning skills at an early age while allowing Oberlin students to bring philosophy out in the world.
Oberlin has a long and outstanding history of producing professional philosophers
Mind and Meaning
How do we see and understand things in the world? What is the nature of memory and what does it mean to forget? Examine these questions and other processes that underlie a creature’s ability to think and reason as part of Oberlin’s minor in cognitive science.
Featured Courses
PHIL 201
Reason and Argument
A study of methods for analyzing and evaluating arguments as they appear in various settings, including scientific, philosophical, and legal contexts. The course will include an introduction to the study of formal logic, and inductive and probabilistic reasoning.
- Taught by
- Dorit Ganson
PHIL 215
Ancient Philosophy
An introduction to the central problems of Ancient Greek philosophy, with special emphasis on how Plato and Aristotle respond to Socrates’ paradoxical claims about morality and human nature. Other topics include fate, death and feminism.
- Taught by
- Todd Ganson
PHIL 222
Philosophy of Science
Our best scientific theories seemingly posit an array of entities which we are unable to detect with the unaided senses, but which nonetheless underlie the world of everyday experience things such as genes, electrons, and magnetic fields. Do we have good reason to believe in such entities? And do we arrive at the theories in question by employing a “scientific method” which guarantees truth and objectivity?
- Taught by
- Martin Thomson-Jones
PHIL 238
Ethics and Technology
This course explores the moral questions at play in individuals’, governments’, and corporations’ use of current and future technology. Topics to be considered may include, but are not limited to, the ethics of data privacy, algorithmic decision-making, artificial intelligence, social media, hacking and computer crime, intellectual property, biotechnology, environmental technology, autonomous and semi-autonomous machines, and the intersection of these topics with race, gender, and disability.
- Taught by
Student Profiles
Flexing the Reporting Muscles
At Oberlin, Jenna Gyimesi ’19 was the news editor for the Oberlin Review, a varsity field hockey player, and a triple major in politics, law and society, and philosophy. Now, she is working toward a master’s in journalism at Columbia University.
A Singer Gets Philosophical
Double-degree mezzo-soprano Perri di Christina ’16 looks back on her Oberlin years and, in particular, a philosophy of music class co-taught by professors Katherine Thomson-Jones and James O’Leary.
From Classroom to Community (and Back Again)
As a first-generation student and Bonner Scholar, Sadie Owens ’23 made a difference by working with other students applying to or entering college for the first time.
