After introducing Plato's Republic, Professor Gendler turns to the discussion of Glaucon's challenge in Book II. Glaucon challenges Socrates to defend his claim that acting justly (morally) is valuable in itself, not merely as a means to some other end (in this case, the reputation one gets from seeming just). To bolster the opposing position--that acting justly is only valuable as a means to attaining a good reputation--Glaucon sketches the thought experiment of the Ring of Gyges. In the second half of the lecture, Professor Gendler discusses the experimental results of Daniel Batson, which suggest that, at least in certain controlled laboratory settings, people appear to care more about seeming moral than about actually acting fairly. These experimental results appear to support Glaucon's hypothesis in the Ring of Gyges thought experiment.

1. Introduction
2. The Ring of Gyges: Morality and Hypocrisy
3. Parts of the Soul I
4. Parts of the Soul II
5. The Well-Ordered Soul: Happiness and Harmony
6. The Disordered Soul: Thémis and PTSD
7. Flourishing and Attachment
8. Flourishing and Detachment
9. Virtue and Habit I
10. Virtue and Habit II
11. Weakness of the Will and Procrastination
12. Utilitarianism and its Critiques
13. Deontology
14. The Trolley Problem
15. Empirically-informed Responses
16. Philosophical Puzzles
17. Punishment I
18. Punishment II
19. Contract & Commonwealth: Thomas Hobbes
20. The Prisoner's Dilemma
21. Equality
22. Equality II
23. Social Structures
24. Censorship
25. Tying up Loose Ends
26. Concluding Lecture

Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature pairs central texts from Western philosophical tradition (including works by Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Rawls, and Nozick) with recent findings in cognitive science and related fields. The course is structured around three intertwined sets of topics: Happiness and Flourishing; Morality and Justice; and Political Legitimacy and Social Structures.