Students in the Philosophy Honors Program must complete 36 hours of philosophy classes while maintaining a 3.6 GPA. No course in which a grade below C has been earned may be counted toward the major. You will take:

• 6 hours in Ethics and Value Theory
• 6 hours in History of Philosophy
• 6 hours in Epistemology/Metaphysics/Philosophy of Mind/Logic/Philosophy of Language/Philosophy of Science
• 3 hours of Philosophy Seminar
• 12 hours of Philosophy electives
• 3 hours of Honors Thesis

Specific course lists and course descriptions can be found in the UAB Course Catalog.

Special Notes

The content of special topics courses (PHL 290, 291, 292) and seminars (PHL 490, 491, 492) vary from offering to offering.
Which honors requirement they might satisfy depends on the content, but such courses often fit clearly into one of the above categories. For instance, a course on the Ethics of the Natural and Built Environment would qualify as an ethics course and would satisfy the requirement in Ethics and Value Theory. Students who are unsure about which requirement an individual course satisfies should ask the professor teaching the course or contact the department chair.

Depending on the content, PHL 290 or PHL 490 may be taken more than once to fulfill different requirements. For example, a student may take a 490 seminar on Aristotle to fulfill part of the History of Philosophy requirement, and then take a second 490 seminar on philosophy and cognitive science to fulfill the seminar requirement itself.

Some students reach their senior year only to discover that they have an excess of courses in one required area while being deficient in one of the others.
Naturally, this situation can be prevented by careful planning, but in individual cases a single course from one area might be substituted to satisfy the requirements of another. This is always done at the discretion of the department chair. Questions about such courses, as well as requests for adjustments or substitutions, should be addressed to the chair, either in person or in writing.

Occasionally students find themselves unable to complete the honors thesis.
In such instances the professor will assign a grade for the Directed Readings course but the student will graduate without the honors distinction.