Credits: All Duke in Istanbul students are required to take four courses per semester. Each Duke course is valued at four credit hours and meets a minimum of 35 contact hours. All courses are taught in English. Full academic credit with Duke grades is earned for the successfully completed courses. Non-Duke students are responsible for making arrangements in their home institutions for credit transfer.

Registration: Registration at Bogazici takes places one week prior to the beginning of the semester (second week of February for the Spring semester) and course selection can be made in Istanbul during this period.

Courses: The Duke in Istanbul program has two mandatory and two elective courses. The first mandatory course is the one offered by the program director, Güven Güzeldere: Phil 132 - Cognitive Science of Religion and Morality (see description below). The other mandatory course is on Turkish Language and Culture, specifically designed for non-Turkish students at Bogazici University (this course comes in different levels, based on initial language competency of the students). Prior to or following Duke in Istanbul, Duke students can take Turkish at beginning, intermediate, or advanced levels and also minor in Turkish through the Duke Turkish Language Program.

The remaining two courses may be selected from any of the undergraduate subjects offered at the university. A full range of courses in the humanities, natural and social sciences, economics and business administration, as well as engineering are regularly offered at Bogazici University every year.

For a preliminary list of sample courses that are especially relevant to Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East, and Islam, please click here: Bogazici sample course list.

The reading materials and books used in the courses (in English), the manner in which the courses are taught and the faculty interact with the students, and the methods of evaluation are very much congruent with those of the U.S. colleges and universities.

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Philosophy 132: Cognitive Science of Religion and Morality. Taught by Professor Güven Güzeldere of Duke University's Department of Philosophy, this interdisciplinary course offers a review of the recent theories of the mind in the cognitive science literature as they pertain to the nature of belief in God, religious practices, and moral attitudes against the magnificent backdrop of a city that has been a major center to all three religions of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition for centuries.

In the first part of the course, we will look at whether cognitive science and evolutionary psychology can shed light on questions about the prevalence of religious experiences, beliefs, cultures, and institutions. Is the belief in God the result of a natural proclivity that was furnished into the human species within its evolutionary history as a byproduct of some other selected trait? Is there a module in the brain that underwrites the acquisition and maintenance of religious and moral beliefs, on a par with what Noam Chomsky suggested for our linguistic capacities -an innate "language acquisition device"?

In the second part, we will examine how these recent theories in cognitive science bear on deep-rooted questions in the philosophy of religion and ethics, such as the problem of evil, the problem of the plurality of religions, the belief in an eternal soul and an afterlife, specifically within the three monotheistic religions of the Middle East, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. How do these three religions differ in their formulations of such questions, and in the solutions they put forth in response to them? Are they equally amenable to explanations proposed by cognitive scientific accounts or are there essential differences among them? This part of the course will also involve intermittent visits to the historical sites of worship in Istanbul and conversations on these questions with local representatives of the three religions (the deputy chief Rabbi of Istanbul, a Bishop of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy, and the head Imam of the Lalei Mosque complex).

Finally, we will examine to what extent the ingredients of human culture as they pertain to religious practices and moral behaviour are shared in the biological world of non-human animals? How, if at all, is the neuroscientific work on extraordinary experiences relevant to religious experience? Does a naturalized account of human moral behavior undermine the religion-based accounts of morality?  

Last revised: 8 October 2007