Philosophy

Philosophy Course Offerings - Fall 2013

The Faculty of the Department of Philosophy invites everyone to join us during Fall 2013 to experience the wonders of contemplation and the challenges of rational examination of matters important to human beings in an increasingly troubled world. 

Besides multiple sections of PHI 101 Introduction to Philosophy, we offer the Field 2 (PHI 200) level courses listed below, many with a Core Curriculum Ethics or Justice attribute, as well as a selection of PHI 300 and PHI 400 level courses, which are NOT Field 2 courses, although some carry a Core Curriculum attribute.

* N.B.: Some courses have a service learning component, in some cases offered as an option, in others a course requirement.  Course section letters indicate which in the following way: A section letter with CB (community based learning) included indicates that for that section service learning is optional toward the final grade for that section.  A section letter with SL (service learning) included indicates that service learning is required toward the final grade for that section.

* N.B.: Other Abbreviations: TL indicates that this is a team learning course.  ONL indicates that this course is conducted online.  See each section for details.

PHILOSOPHY 101 - Introduction to Philosophy (14 Sections)

A Core Curriculum Foundations Course

FIELD 2 - PHI 200 LEVEL COURSES (12 Courses, 18 Sections)

Listing those with Core Curriculum Attributes and those in College Programs

PHI 225 M - LOGIC - REED - TR 11:30-12:45

Sound reasoning is important in every career and, indeed, is crucial for good living.  This course provides the tools necessary to distinguish correct from incorrect reasoning.  It focuses on evaluating deductive reasoning in ordinary language; also covered are informal fallacies and inductive argumentation by analogy.  This course contains a component on analytical reasoning that may be helpful for pre-law students planning to take the LSAT.

PHI 225 ONL- LOGIC ON LINE - ZEIS - TBA

Sound reasoning is important in every career and, indeed, is crucial for good living.  This course provides tools necessary to distinguish correct from incorrect reasoning.  This course is delivered entirely online, using the powerful and user-friendly Aplia logic course available from Cengage publishing in conjunction with the course’s Angel site.  The Angel site includes an Elluminate room which enables teacher-student online office visits.

PHI 241 B -  ETHICS: TRADITIONS IN MORAL REASONING - DJUTH - MWF 9:00-9:50
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Ethics Program Credit

A survey of principal traditions in moral reasoning with attention to moral principles and their applications to contemporary social realities. 

PHI 241 ONL - ETHICS: TRADITIONS IN MORAL REASONING - DJUTH - W 6:00-8:45
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Ethics Program Credit

This course also is a survey of principal traditions in moral reasoning with attention to moral principles and their applications to contemporary social realities.

PHI 241 ONL is not a self-paced online course.  It meets weekly online on Wednesday evenings from 6 to 8:45 except on days when exams are given.  Exams are given in a classroom on campus.  In the fall semester, we will use web conferencing to communicate with each other.

PHI 242 B - ETHICAL ISSUES IN BUSINESS - JOHNSTON - MWF 9:00-9:50
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Ethics Program Credit                                                                       

The continuing economic downturn is a powerful reminder of the impact that business practices can have on all our lives.  This course asks if the ethics of business is incompatible with the business of ethics.  We examine the ethical implications of the relationships between businesses and their shareholders, employees and society at large.  This course asks the important question of whether ethics is simply an obstacle that must be overcome in the pursuit of profit or if an ethical critique of role of business in society can or should fundamentally constrain the way businesses operate.

PHI 242 R - ETHICAL ISSUES IN BUSINESS - WALSH - M 6:00-8:45
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute  
Ethics Program Credit                                                                         

The continuing economic downturn is a powerful reminder of the impact that business practices can have on all our lives.  This course asks if the ethics of business is incompatible with the business of ethics.  We examine the ethical implications of the relationships between businesses and their shareholders, employees and society at large.  This course asks the important question of whether ethics is simply an obstacle that must be overcome in the pursuit of profit or if an ethical critique of role of business in society can or should fundamentally constrain the way businesses operate.

PHI 243 CCB - BIO-MEDICAL ETHICS - REED - MWF 10:00-10:50
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Service Learning Optional
Ethics Program Credit

This course is designed to advance reasoned analysis in an effort to clarify and resolve some of the central dilemmas which arise in the field of medical ethics.  Students will be introduced to diverse points of view in medical ethics by considering paradigmatic cases in the field of medicine and responses to those cases by doctors, philosophers, and policy-makers.  Among the areas we will consider are: informed consent, truth-telling, confidentiality, genetic and reproductive control, allocation of scarce medical resources, abortion, euthanasia, and the right to healthcare.  The course intends to acquaint students with the main issues in contemporary bioethics and to allow students to respond to these issues critically and courageously.

PHI 243 DCB - BIO-MEDICAL ETHICS - REED - MWF 11:00-11:50
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Service Learning Optional
Ethics Program Credit

This course is designed to advance reasoned analysis in an effort to clarify and resolve some of the central dilemmas which arise in the field of medical ethics.  Students will be introduced to diverse points of view in medical ethics by considering paradigmatic cases in the field of medicine and responses to those cases by doctors, philosophers, and policy-makers.  Among the areas we will consider are: informed consent, truth-telling, confidentiality, genetic and reproductive control, allocation of scarce medical resources, abortion, euthanasia, and the right to healthcare.  The course intends to acquaint students with the main issues in contemporary bioethics and to allow students to respond to these issues critically and courageously.

PHI 245 D - ANIMAL ETHICS - ZEIS - MWF 11:00-11:50
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Ethics Program Credit

A wide range of moral issues concerning our treatment of animals will be the focus, including: animal rights and welfare, vegetarianism, euthanasia, animal experimentation, animal management, stewardship, and our obligation to animals in the wild.  Brief surveys of ethical theories and theories on animal cognition will also be presented as foundational for reasonable discussion of these moral issues.

PHI 245 F - ANIMAL ETHICS - ESCOBAR - MWF 1:00-1:50
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Ethics Program Credit

The course surveys conceptual and ethical questions concerning human-animal relationships.  Topics treated include the philosophical principles (Utilitarianism, Kantian Theory, Virtue Ethics, etc.) that underlie concern for animal welfare and animal rights.  Application to real-world examples is highly stressed.  Students will explore through lecture, discussion, and student presentations the most highly contested issues within animal ethics.  Examples include but are not limited to: scientific research on animals, vegetarianism, factory farming, zoos, poaching and animal euthanasia.

PHI 252 CSL - HAPPINESS, VIRTUE & THE GOOD LIFE - CHANDERBHAN - MWF 10:00-10:50
Core Curriculum Ethics Attribute
Service Learning Required (15 Hours)
Ethics Program Credit

Suppose everyone wants to be happy. Fine – but what does that mean, and how do we get there?  What is happiness, really?  Is it having a greater balance of pleasure over pain in life?  Is it having a habitually positive outlook on life?  Or is it really a matter of our objective well-being, if such a thing exists?  We may also wonder how the notion of virtue is related to happiness.  Is virtue either sufficient or necessary for happiness?  And what do these two things have to do with this thing called “the good life”?  

In this course, we will tackle these questions, among others, through a study of classical philosophical accounts of happiness and virtue (e.g., Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Bentham, Nietzsche, etc.), as well as contemporary philosophical texts that are informed by empirical findings in psychology.  Questions at the intersection of these three topics will also be investigated through one's service learning experience throughout the semester.

PHI 261 C - PHILOSOPHY OF LAW - DJUTH - MWF 10:00-10:50
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute
Justice Program Credit

This course examines the concepts and principles for describing and understanding legal systems, and the relationships between law and legal systems, society and morality.  It serves those pursuing careers in law, criminal justice, public affairs, politics, the social sciences, and philosophy.

PHI 267 LSL - CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT - CHANDERBHAN - TR 10:00-11:15
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute
Service Learning Required (15 Hours)
Catholic Studies Program Credit
Justice Program Credit

From the time of Leo XIII through the present day, the Catholic Church has continued to develop a comprehensive set of positions and doctrines on fundamental ethical issues of social concern in the world.  Such issues include (1) the fundamental rights and responsibilities of communities and individual humans across all strata of society, with respect to the "common good," (2) the relationships of workers both to their labor and to economic and political structures, and (3) the reciprocal relationship between individuals and governments. 

In this class, we will study the philosophy of the Church on these issues, comparing it against other competing accounts.  We will begin with a study of philosophical positions and beliefs that are foundational to Catholic social thought; this underpinning largely comes from the thought of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.  We will then study specific concerns within each of the issues listed above through a close reading of relevant passages of Papal encyclicals, as well as associated articles and video clips.  Learning about Catholic commitments to social justice and service will also be achieved through one's service learning experience.

PHI 271 U - PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS - SIMMONDS-PRICE - R 6:00-8:45
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute
Justice Program Credit

Concerns of human rights are part of global politics.  This course asks whether human rights transcend political orders or are tied to political systems of national sovereignty.  It also addresses the dynamic of cultural relativism vs absolutism that informs the debate about whether human rights are Western and Eurocentric or whether they can truly be applied universally to all human beings.

PHI 272 NCB - GENDER & PHILOSPHY - MOSKO - TR 1:00-2:15
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute

Service Learning Optional

Women and Gender Studies Program Credit
Justice Program Credit

This course studies feminist theories and analyzes what gender is, the role that gender plays as a social structure and how it forms masculine and feminine subjects/subjectivities.  We will study various theories of what might constitute justice with respect to living in a gendered society. In doing so, we will study the power dynamics that constitute gender at the levels of individual subjectivity and interpersonal relationships as well as in economic and political life.

PHI 273 M - RACE & PHILOSPHY - HAVIS - TR 11:30-12:45
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute

This course studies the philosophical assumptions underlying concepts of race that treats designations of racial identities, the political effects of racial classification, the ethics of race, the metaphysical legitimacy and social reality of racial classifications.  In addition, Hip Hop theory is used as a lens for exploring the intersections between race, identity, gender, and class.

PHI 274 E - SOCIAL & POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY - OTTO - MWF 12:00-12:50
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute
Justice Program Credit

This course examines basic questions concerning human values, social organization, and the principles of political association.  It has a special concern to examine modern political issues and their historical antecedents and examines some key political and social concepts: equality, liberty, legitimization, social class, race relations, social justice, cultural tradition and cultural meaning.  There is a particular emphasis on the political and social upheavals associated with the formation of modern society, the rise of democratic republics displacing feudalism, the radical critique of a new capitalist society, the beginnings of a critique of white supremacy, and an early philosophical assessment of modernity.

PHI 274 LCB - SOCIAL & POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY - MOSKO - TR 10:00-11:15
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute

Service Learning Optional
Justice Program Credit

This course examines basic questions concerning human values, social organization, and the principles of political association.  It has a special concern to examine modern political issues and their historical antecedents and examines some key political and social concepts: equality, liberty, race, gender, and social justice. We will pay special attention to the history of social and political philosophy beginning with the Ancient Greeks through the European Enlightenment.

UPPER (300-400) LEVEL PHILOSOPHY COURSES (3 Sections, 2 Sections of our Core Capstone)

These courses require that one has taken at least one PHI 200 level course

PHI 301 N - ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY - PERKINS -  TR 1:00-2:15
European Studies Program Credit

This course studies the ancient thinkers of Greece beginning in the 200 years before the death of Socrates with special concern to study the moral and political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle as also their metaphysics.  An overarching theme of the course is to acquire a good grasp of the classical sense of philosophy as concerned with happiness and the good life.  We begin by briefly examining some prominent philosophers before Plato — Parmenides, Zeno, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Gorgias, even Socrates — and then some of the early and middle dialogues of Plato to gain a philosophical familiarity with Plato’s epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics.  Here we shall read Euthyphro, Charmides, Meno, Protagoras, and parts of Republic.  Next we shall examine the ethics and political philosophy of Aristotle with particular attention to Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, which Aristotle took to be two parts of the same treatise.  Time permitting we shall examine some post-Aristotelian philosophers — those in the traditions of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism.

PHI 305 ICB - CONTEMPORARY CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY - LOUGHEAD - MW 3:00-4:15
Core Curriculum Justice Attribute

Service Learning Optional
European Studies Program Credit
Women and Gender Studies Program Credit

This course explores various movements in Contemporary Continental Philosophy such as phenomenology, postmodernism, feminism, critical theory, and deconstruction. Students will analyze these movements and ideas in relation to one another and to the current world.  Students will also explore and scrutinize these contemporary movements in relation to how they understand themselves and the formation of the subject.  Such analysis requires intense critical thinking skills:  to read and interpret text; to think broadly about the world around them and investigate their assumptions about it; to dissect ideas; to deeply contemplate the issues of self, gender, language, power, freedom, death and ethics; and to extrapolate upon how various theoretical views shape our world and are shaped by our world.

PHI 399 D - ETHICS, JUSTICE, & PROBLEM of POVERTY - JOHNSTON - MWF 11:00-11:50
Core Curriculum Capstone Course

This course synthesizes the learning experiences from having completed the components of the Core Curriculum.  The course has two parts.  The first part takes up consideration of two texts that provide a strong yet accessible background in ethics, justice, and diversity: (1) Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; and (2) Michael Sandel: Justice.  The second part of the course examines the controversy between two development economists; here the texts are: (3) Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty; and (4) William Easterly: The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.  The emphasis then is on global awareness.  Examining the controversy between Sachs and Easterly raises concern about how good will and a commitment to justice by themselves seem not to entail clear and easy solutions to the problem of world poverty.

PHI 399 N - ETHICS, JUSTICE, & PROBLEM of POVERTY - RIVERA-BERRUZ - TR 1:00-2:15
Core Curriculum Capstone Course

Open to all students from all majors, this core capstone course was partly designed for Business Majors.  We will consider several rival versions of our moral self-understanding and several rival versions of how to address contemporary moral problems.  Our goal is to apply these different approaches to the problem of world poverty.  Since by current estimates, over 1.7 billion people live in absolute poverty [less than $1.25 per day], how do different economic approaches to these problems entail different conceptions of justice and of the living well?  The course considers our position as moral beings in a poverty stricken world.

PHI 409 L - SEMINAR IN PHENOMENOLOGY: WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? - LOUGHEAD - TR 10:00-11:15

This seminar explores several questions with regards to the university: What are the purposes of a university degree -- for individuals and for society? Are there particular themes, ideas, or methodologies that a university education should include? Our investigation involves reflection on the concepts of "critical thinking," "alienation," "ideology," and "freedom."  This seminar pays particular attention to the ways in which capitalism shapes what a university is and how students relate to it.  As this is a phenomenology seminar, we begin from the concrete world (the university as it exists today) and try to uncover the theory (and assumptions) behind it, always aware that there is no necessary relationship between what is and what could be.  

PHI 451 - THESIS GUIDANCE - VARIOUS - TBA

For Philosophy Majors only.  Majors must coordinate thesis work with a thesis director and have thesis proposal approved in advance of registration.