Department of Philosophy (PHI)
WINTER SESSION: 12/18/2009 – 01/22/2010
COURSE OFFERINGS AND DESCRIPTIONS
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
This course is a survey of moral issues that face contemporary society. As an online course, it focuses on student discussion of these moral questions and analysis of contemporary arguments. Topics include human enhancement, war, terrorism, advertising ethics, and technological alienation.
The three great religions of the Western world, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are forms of ethical monotheism. These three share the core belief that there is only and one divine being and this divine being is a perfect or maximally great being. This course will focus on the key idea of God as a perfect or maximally great being, though attention will also be paid to other ideas of the divine. Our studies will include a consideration of (1) the extent to which our concepts of divine attributes can be analyzed or defined, (2) the coherence or intelligibility of those concepts, taken individually, and in combination, and (3) arguments or reasons put forward to prove or disprove, confirm or disconfirm, the existence of God, including the Cosmological Argument, the Ontological Argument, the Design Argument, religious and mystical experiences, and the Problem of Evil. On-line course.
This course begins with a survey of major ethical theories and their application to the international business environment. We will then examine answers to questions such as: What is the purpose of the corporation? What obligations do corporations and business people have? How do we determine responsibility? What information should salespeople provide customers? When is an ad deceptive? When in Rome, shall we always conduct business the Roman way? Additional topics include discrimination in hiring, whistle blowing, workplace privacy, intellectual property, affirmative action, the environment, bribery, ethical challenges of globalization, and social justice. Special focus is given to analyzing real world cases in business ethics.
SPRING 2010
COURSE OFFERINGS AND DESCRIPTIONS
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
For all we know, we could be in a Matrix world. At least, that is what some philosophers claim. Whether or not we agree with these philosophers, the claim depends on the assumption that there is a gap between appearance and reality, a gap, according to some, which cannot be closed. The problem of the gap between appearance and reality provides the frame-work for this introductory course. Within that framework, various epistemological questions will be addressed. Some of these include: Can we gain knowledge of the external world? Is there any knowledge of which we can be certain? Does science provide genuine knowledge? We will use a variety of tools to address these questions, including philosophical texts, movies and news articles, in which the key concepts and the problems under investigation are illustrated. This writing-intensive class will meet every other week; opposite weeks are on-line. Computer/internet access required.
This course introduces students to the central problems, topics, and figures in western philosophy through a careful consideration of classical and contemporary readings. Non-western and continental philosophies are not covered in this course. Topics to be discussed include: the existence of God, knowledge and skepticism, the mind-body problem, consciousness and personal identity, and freedom and determinism. The format for the course is a mix of lecture and discussion. The primary goal is to enable students to think more critically about philosophical issues and their connections to everyday life.
This course is a survey of important problems of philosophy in some of the main topic areas, including logic or correct reasoning, the theory of knowledge (what is knowledge?), ethics (what makes something right or wrong), and philosophy of religion (questions about the nature and existence of God).
An introductory survey of things you need to know to be a critical thinker. Elementary forms of correct deductive and inductive reasoning, fallacies, principles for comparing and evaluating hypotheses and theories, guidelines for assessing the reliability of information sources including the media, experts, and your own personal experience.
Computer/Internet access required (Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla Firefox work – IE 8 will not).
In this course, we will examine some of the most prominent approaches to ethical theory in the Western philosophical tradition. We will not be concerned with concrete moral questions such as "Is the death penalty morally justifiable when applied to juvenile offenders?," but instead with abstract questions such as, "what makes killing wrong?" and the even more abstract question, "what makes any action wrong?" Among the theories we will consider are moral relativism, divine command morality, social contract morality, utilitarianism, and the moral theories of Immanuel Kant and Aristotle.
Moral problems are questions about which people hold differing opinions with respect to the morality of the issue. In this course, you will be acquainted with the critical reasoning skills of philosophical methodology and with the most prominent theories of ethics. We will discuss how these theories might guide our actions and apply these theories to moral issues of the day.
Readings on and discussion of contemporary moral problems, such as those posed by abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, cloning, war, capital punishment, euthanasia, and the treatment of animals.
Moral problems are questions about which people hold differing opinions with respect to the morality of the issue. In this course, you will be acquainted with the critical reasoning skills of philosophical methodology and with the most prominent theories of ethics. We will discuss how these theories might guide our actions and apply these theories to moral issues of the day.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to some of the core ethical concepts relevant to discussions of medical ethics and to apply these concepts to central issues in contemporary medical ethics. Some of these concepts are competence, consent, and confidentiality, and some of the topics we will use these concepts to talk about are euthanasia, abortion, and the use of embryonic stem cells. During the course of the semester, we will see that even though there is substantial disagreement about some of these "hot button" issues, there is wide agreement among people (including health care professionals) about most of the factors that should be taken into account when dealing with specific cases. We will also see that having a clear view of the core concepts can make it easier to deal with the especially complex ethical issues which are so common in medical settings.
This course surveys the ideas of important philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. The relation of the development of modern science to the writings of these figures is one of the main themes of the course, so thinkers such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton are also studied. Another course theme is how modern philosophy was a revival, to an important extent, of ancient philosophy after the rediscovery of ancient texts during the Renaissance.
In this course, we will discuss a variety of topics at the intersection between Philosophy of Psychology and Philosophy of Mind. We will consider how and what our minds allow us to know about the external and internal world. On the one hand, we can ask what is going on when we perceive external objects. On the other hand, we might also wonder whether it's really possible to perceive (introspect) what happens in our own minds. It is easy to take consciousness for granted, but what is consciousness? (Could a machine be conscious?) We will also think about thinking. Is it possible to do this without language, or does our very ability to think presuppose a prior language—a language of thought? And we will consider emotions. Human beings experience such a wide variety of emotions. What is it that makes them all emotions? (And would it be possible for a machine to have emotions?)
This will be a survey course, conducted in seminar style, for upper level UGs. Readings are split into three main sections: French Existentialism (Sartre, Camus), German Existentialism (Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kafka), and a final section on "The forefathers of Existentialism", Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky. Reading chronology - we will be working backwards, beginning with Sartre whose philosophy and life as a public intellectual gave meaning to the term "Existentialism", followed by Heidegger who essentially never identified with this philosophical movement, though the words 'existence' and 'existential' figure significantly in his work. We will spend a significant amount of time on the written 'debate' between Sartre and Heidegger concerning the rendering of the latter terms. Lastly, we will ask: What, if any, connections are there to be made between the ideas and works of twentieth century philosophers who operated within an articulated existentialist movement and the ideas and works of nineteenth century" forefathers" who were philosophizing within "other" frameworks? The focus will be on philosophical texts but the course will be peppered with some literary texts from writers deemed existentialist. There is a good chance that we will also be watching some films. For those students who want to do any pre-reading, I recommend Sartre's philosophical autobiography, "The Words".
This is a basic course in formal deductive logic. The discipline is common to mathematics and philosophy. Its principles and methods are the foundation of all rational thought. The material is organized into four units: proof theory for propositional logic, semantics for propositional logic, proof theory for predicate logic, and semantics for predicate logic. We will study this material sequentially, with a written, graded exercise on each unit. The proof method we will use is derivational. This course does not include meta-theory.
This is an introductory course in epistemology, or "theory of knowledge". Epistemology asks what knowledge is, and, in particular, how it differs from true belief. The subject originates with Plato and is central to the work of all major historical figures in philosophy, but we will focus on contemporary issues and contributions. Topics include epistemic justification, skepticism, contextualism, reliability, a priori knowledge, and epistemic paradox. Students will write short papers taking a position on debates about these topics.
Two philosophical questions form the framework of this class: What is art and how do we evaluate/interpret works of art? We will address these questions through exploring readings in philosophy and art theory, by discussing works of art themselves, and by examining our own engagement with respect to works of art, either as working artists or active connoisseurs of art.
A survey of past and present views of scientific method and scientific rationality. Special emphasis on controversies over the nature of scientific theories, views on the structure of scientific explanation, differing accounts of the process by which theories are tested and accepted or rejected, and realist versus non-realist attitudes toward theoretical entities.
An intense study of some of the basic topics in metaphysics, such as the problem of universals, the nature of individual substance, the difference between the nature of living and non-living things, and the basic categories of entities that populate reality, such as time, space events and properties. Writing-intensive course.
The three great religions of the Western world, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are forms of ethical monotheism. These three share the core belief that there is only and one divine being and this divine being is a perfect or maximally great being. This course will focus on the key idea of God as a perfect or maximally great being, though attention will also be paid to other ideas of the divine. Our studies will include a consideration of (1) the extent to which our concepts of divine attributes can be analyzed or defined, (2) the coherence or intelligibility of those concepts, taken individually, and in combination, and (3) arguments or reasons put forward to prove or disprove, confirm or disconfirm, the existence of God, including the Cosmological Argument, the Ontological Argument, the Design Argument, religious and mystical experiences, and the Problem of Evil. On-line course - Computer-internet access required
Michael Matteson T Th 2:00 - 3:15
Chris Metivier T Th 3:30 - 4:45
This course begins with a survey of major ethical theories and their application to the international business environment. We will then examine answers to questions such as: What is the purpose of the corporation? What obligations do corporations and business people have? How do we determine responsibility? What information should salespeople provide customers? When is an ad deceptive? When in Rome, shall we always conduct business the Roman way? Additional topics include discrimination in hiring, whistle blowing, workplace privacy, intellectual property, affirmative action, the environment, bribery, ethical challenges of globalization, and social justice. Special focus is given to analyzing real world cases in business ethics.
After doing a brief survey of what major philosophers have said about human nature, the course will examine the implications of Darwinianism for understanding human nature. There will be a particular focus on the implications for ethics, and at the end of the course, we will read from those who believe that it is wrong to attempt to enhance human nature. Writing and Speaking intensive.
PHI 401 — Reading Course for SeniorsPHI 402 —Independent Study
PHI 493 —Honors Work
For graduate students or Independent Study by special permission. Writing-intensive course.