Assigned Readings

Week 1

Cleland - Why Life Can't Be Defined

Week 2

Searle - The Chinese Room

Block - The China Brain

Dupre - The Ship of Theseus

Perry - A Dialogue on Personal Identity

Week 3

Kagan - The Nature of Death

Week 4

Nozick - The Experience Machine

Parfit - What Makes Someone's Life Go Best?

Benatar - Why It Is Better Never to Come into Existence

Week 5

Nagel - Death

Purves - The Badness of Death

Williams - The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality

Fischer - Why Immortality Is Not So Bad

Week 6

Tolstoy - A Confession

Craig - The Absurdity of Life Without God

Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus

Nagel - The Absurd

Taylor - The Meaning of Life

Green - Sycamore Trees

Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning

Week 7

Wolf - The Meanings of Lives

Week 8

Kagan - Suicide

Rachels - Active and Passive Euthanasia

Week 9

Marquis - Why Abortion is Immoral

Thomson - A Defense of Abortion

Warren - On The Moral and Legal Status of Abortion

Week 10

Cohen - The Case for the Use of Animals

Norcross - Puppies, Pigs, and People

Norcross - The Significance of Death for Animals

Week 12

LaFollette - Licensing Parents

Vance - A Risk-Based Argument for Anti-Natalism

Week 13

Parfit - The Non-Identity Problem

Broome - The Social Discount Rate

Parfit - The Social Discount Rate

Week 15

Chan - Enduring Emotions (read sections 1-5)

Smuts - Art and Negative Affect

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