As its name suggests, the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy houses a linguistics section and a philosophy section. Though they share a number of intellectual interests and a joint undergraduate major, these two sections are administratively autonomous with separate chairpersons, faculties, admissions procedures, curricular and degree requirements, and financial aid programs.

Linguistics

The research conducted by the MIT Linguistics Program strives to develop a general theory that reveals the rules and laws that govern the structure of particular languages, and the general laws and principles governing all natural languages. The core of the program includes most of the traditional subfields of linguistics: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and psycholinguistics, as well as questions concerning the interrelations between linguistics and other disciplines such as philosophy and logic, literary studies, the study of formal languages, acoustics, and computer science.

For more information, visit http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/home.html

Philosophy

The Philosophy section of MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy offers two undergraduate majors: one a general philosophy major, and another joint major with the linguistics section in the foundations of the study of language and mind. For more than 30 years, the Department has also had an outstanding Ph.D. program that attracts students from around the world, and has placed its graduates on the faculties of the world's leading universities.

The Department's faculty is small, but has research and teaching strengths in a wide range of areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, logic, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind, ethics,
and political philosophy. The MIT philosophy program also offers the opportunity for interdisciplinary work in linguistics, mathematics, and political science.

For more information, visit http://web.mit.edu/philos/www/

Recent Submissions

  • 24.01 Classics in Western Philosophy, Spring 2006 

    Langton, Rae (2006-06)
    This course will introduce you to the Western philosophical tradition, through the study of major figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, and Kant. You will get to grips with questions that have been significant ...
  • 24.241 Logic I, Fall 2005 

    McGee, Vann (2005-12)
    This course provides an introduction to the aims and techniques of formal logic. Logic is the science of correct argument, and our study of logic will aim to understand what makes a correct argument good, that is, what is ...
  • 24.201 Topics in the History of Philosophy: Kant, Fall 2005 

    Langton, Rae (2005-12)
    In this course we shall study the Critique of Pure Reason with special focus on questions about idealism, about our ignorance of things in themselves, and about what, if anything, idealism has to do with this kind of ...

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