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Fall 2026 Graduate Course Descriptions

Listed below are the Philosophy courses being offered at Purdue University in Fall 2026. The courses are listed by their five-digit course number and course title, followed by a brief description. The tables below each description also include information on the course type (e.g., lectures = ‘LEC’), the enrolment limit of the course, the day(s)/time of the course or each section of it, the classroom in which the course will be taught, and the instructor(s) for the course. Courses that include a recitation section are marked in the tables below as type ‘LEC/REC.’ Details of the recitation sections are not listed. The type ‘DIST’ indicates a fully asynchronous, online course. ‘Grad’ indicates that a graduate student will be the instructor of record. PHIL courses that are cross-listed with other courses are marked as such (e.g., ‘c/l DEPT 10000’).

Have questions about philosophy graduate courses? You can contact our Grad Coordinator, Vickie Sanders, via email at sanders@purdue.edu, or by phone at 765-494-4275.

500 LEVEL COURSES

52400  Contemporary Ethical Theory

54000  Studies in Social and Political Philosophy: Higher Education and the State

This seminar investigates the relationship between colleges and universities and the states that often fund their operations. If the state is justified in taxing citizens to fund such institutions, despite their deep disagreements regarding justice and the good life,  why so? Given that it does fund such institutions, to what extent is it justified in constraining their operations? How do the university's constitutive values of academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and free inquiry impact questions concerning higher education's internal and external governance? We will explore these and related questions by reading contemporary works in political theory, philosophy, legal theory, and classics in the history of ideas.

58000A Rational Choice Theory

Rational choice theory is the collection of mathematical, and philosophical theories of decision making by rational individuals: (i) taken alone; (ii) in competition; and (iii) in groups. This course provides a rigorous conceptual and mildly mathematical introduction to all three.

58000B Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence

This course will look at some philosophical issues surrounding AI. Some of the questions we will ask, and begin to answer, include the following: What is the nature of computation, and how does it create a basis for AI? What exactly is artificial intelligence, and is there a difference between artificial and natural intelligence? Are there fundamental differences between machine and human intelligence? How does machine learning relate to questions about the nature of AI? Do different approaches to AI result in different kinds of machine intelligence? Do AI systems need bodies in order to be fully intelligent, or can they be completely software-based? What, if anything, does AI tell us about our own mind or brain?

This course does not assume any prior knowledge in computer science, artificial intelligence, or machine learning, but some readings for the course will include technical elements. 

600 LEVEL COURSES

68400 Studies in British Empiricism: Hume on Laws and Causes

Hume’s is important to modern-day philosophy of science in a way that few philosophers from the past are. We’ll look at his metaphysics and philosophy of science from both historical and philosophical perspectives. Topics include Hume’s analysis of causation, his claim that distinct existences can exist independently of each other, his problem of induction, his view that we shouldn’t trust miracle stories, and his account of the laws of nature, both as he actually held it and as his modern followers take it to be. Two papers, a class presentation, and an analytical bibliography will be assigned.

Want to know what else we offer? Check out the Master Course List