PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT FALL SEMESTER 2009 COURSE OFFERINGS INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (PHIL 100W) MIND BODY PROBLEM (PHIL 101) LOGIC AND CRITICAL THINKING (PHIL 110) INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS (PHIL 120) CULTURE IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY (PHIL 205) PHIL 240: Law, Justice, and Society Instructor: Craig Matarrese How should we think about our political freedoms? What does a just or fair society look like? Should the state tax citizens so as to provide various forms of social welfare (including health care, social security, education, etc.), and if so, how extensive should this state responsibility be? Why is democracy good and/or desirable? Does democracy allow for the expression of a fundamental human capacity, or is it just a way of organizing competing interests? Should the state be concerned with our beliefs (as opposed to just being concerned with our actions), e.g., beliefs about religion or sexuality? If so, can the state allocate rights and benefits according to such beliefs? Should the state recognize same-sex marriage? This course focuses on ethical-political theories, how they help us analyze the idea of justice (an idea that is deeply and inextricably linked to other key concepts in political philosophy, e.g., freedom, democracy, and equality), and how they help us confront serious and complex issues that shape our everyday lives. In this course you will develop a command of the basic political perspectives that tend to shape public debate about justice in our country, learn to apply these theoretical perspectives to concrete issues, and perhaps most importantly, acquire the reflective and critical depth that characterizes a mature engagement with moral complexity. That is to say, this course covers a great variety of issues and problems, but is essentially about thinking and finding your bearings in the moral-social-political world.
The course looks at the connections between the general notion of justice and the ideas of utility, property, autonomy, community, and morality. We will ultimately find that all of these issues are related, and that the real challenge when doing philosophy is to find the right question (let alone the right answer!) in the midst of a number of complex, overlapping, and interrelated concepts. In addition to satisfying the writing intensive General Education requirement, this course also satisfies a core requirement of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) major, and is designed to capture the sort of thinking that the PPE majors will practice & develop through their course of study. The focus of the PPE major is on the dynamic relationships between the economic, political, and legal systems of our society, relationships that require the analytical methods of all three disciplines to be understood fully. For example, the best way to understand our competitive market economy, certainly a fundamental institution of our society, is to explore its empirical, historical, political, and ethical dimensions. Accordingly, the material you read in this course cannot be easily characterized as being either philosophy, political science, or economics. ******************************************************************** Instructor: Matt Brophy Philosophy 321: Social and Political Philosophy TH 9:30 9:30-10:45 In this course, we will study some of the most fundamental issues in political philosophy: Why have a government? What kind of government, if any, is morally justified? What is the moral responsibility of the citizen to the laws of the state? When (if ever) is revolution justified? To what liberties are citizens entitled? Ought the government at all determine how resources are distributed, and if so how? We will examine the philosophical grounds of several political viewpoints: political liberalism, libertarianism, communitarianism, socialism and egalitarianism. Though our reading will focus primarily on political theories, we will consider several contemporary political and social issues, (which help illustrate these theories): illegal immigration, homosexual marriage, liberty vs. security post-9-11, animal rights, responsibility to future generations, the role of government in business, etc.
Instructor: Jaime Hoffman Ethical Theory Philosophy 322W TH 12:30-1:45 In this course, we will focus on ethical theory and its place within moral philosophy. We will begin by asking why moral philosophers are interested in ethical theories and will briefly consider the topic of anti-theory. Next, we will explore some of the more prevalent types of ethical theories, including: virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. In the final weeks of this course, we will look at some contemporary moral problems so as to see how (and whether) ethical theories can help us to think through these problems. In the course of the term, we will also take up a number of meta-ethical topics, including moral skepticism and relativism. *********************************************************************** Philosophy 334W: Classical Philosophy Fall 2009 Section 01: MWF 9:00-9:50 am Section 02: MWF 1:00-1:50 Professor John Humphrey Plato's Republic voted the greatest work of philosophy ever written! Plato's student, Aristotle, who set up the Lyceum to compete with his master's Academy, also figures twice in the top 10 (Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics)! During the semester we will examine the origins and roots of western philosophy by looking at its main characters and some of their more interesting and significant doctrines and principles. We will begin by studying some of the more important members of a group of philosophers known collectively as the Pre-Socratics. Some of them might be better called "Pre-Scientists" because their chief interest seems to be speculating about the nature of the world and the universe as a whole in scientific terms, albeit crude and primitive ones by today's standards. From there, things become a bit more philosophical in the works of Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Parmenides (called the first metaphysician by some) but it is all a prelude to the enigmatic and infamous Socrates. The figure of Socrates casts a wide shadow over western philosophy, in part because of the way he died but also because of how he lived. And what we know about how he lived and died we know chiefly from one of his "pupils", Plato. Plato wrote a series of dialogues in which Socrates is the main character. In these dialoges we find Socrates "examining" people by asking them to define various concepts that they claim to know, concepts like justice, friendship, piety, virtue, etc. We will critically analyze several of these dialogues, including the aforementioned Republic. We will also read key sections of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, a work which contains a significant critique of several of the doctrines of the Republic. *********************************************************************
PHIL 455/555: Phenomenology & Existentialism TH 11:00-12:15 Instructor: Craig Matarrese Though some consider existentialism to be a formerly-trendy intellectual movement that started in post-war Europe, spread through the English-speaking world, and exhausted itself by the eighties, this characterization grasps only the most superficial part of the story. Aside from the fact that there has been a swell of interest among professional philosophers in some of the precursors to existentialism, e.g., Nietzsche and Heidegger, a better understanding of existentialism takes it to refer to a loose association of philosophers and writers who take human life seriously and try to explore the deepest of questions we can ask, in ways that are responsive to the challenges and disenchantments of the modern world, and in ways that help us figure out how to live our lives. Of course, they are not the first philosophers to contemplate life (philosophers have been doing this since before Socrates!), but they are the first to call into question our values, choices, and theoretical perspectives by looking closely at the nature of subjectivity, at what it means to be a human being, to make choices, and to be free. They argue that these questions take on a new urgency and complexity since the old value-generating stories that sustained us in the past (God, Nature, the Cosmos, Reason) have lost their force; or as Nietzsche puts it, we have new problems to face now that God is dead. Phenomenology, on the other hand, never quite enjoyed the sort of broad public recognition that existentialism did, but it involves the sort of technical investigation of consciousness that most forms of existentialism presuppose. Whereas phenomenologists, following Husserl, attempted to describe and investigate the nature of consciousness with an eye towards questions about knowledge, existentialists borrowed these investigative tools and applied them to questions of action. This course explores existentialism and phenomenology through their 19th Century precursors, canonical works by Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and others, and in some cases works from the philosophical theory to literature and vice versa. One might even argue that this use of fiction is the best way to study existentialism and phenomenology, since the theoretical aspiration here is to capture the lived dynamics of human life, but then literature obviously reveals elements of human life that argumentative philosophical prose cannot. ******************************************************************** PHIL 473/573: Knowledge and Reality Instructor: Brandon Cooke MWF 12-12:50 When can we count a belief as knowledge? Can we ever? What is the nature of the objects of our belief?
At first glance, these may seem like questions for psychology and physics. It seems, however, that whatever account we give of the way our beliefs are formed, our beliefs need to stand in the right relation to the world and to our other beliefs in order to count as knowledge. One of the main concerns of this course will be to assess some of the central theories of the needed relations. One enemy of these projects is skepticism. How do I know that I m not deceived about everything I believe? Given that I have been mistaken before, how do I know I m not mistaken now? Do my experiences allow me to know about matters which I have not experienced? We will also examine various attempts to neutralize these skeptical threats. Physics (and the other natural sciences) are in the business of investigating the nature of reality. But the sciences operate over certain background assumptions, for instance, that the objects under investigation exist independently of our minds, and that physical reality is governed by laws. The sciences also operate without asking certain questions; all sciences use numbers, but none of them ask (nor seem to need to ask) what numbers are. In the second portion of this course, we will examine some of these presuppositions. What are numbers? What is the relation between properties and their instantiations? What is it to be the same thing over time? How do we reconcile our scientific belief that the world is causally closed with the belief that we are free to act? The primary assessment for the course will consist in two papers, one on epistemology and one on metaphysics, and a take-home final exam. Those registered for graduate credit will be required to write longer papers. Although it is not a formal prerequisite, you will find this course much easier going if you have already taken PHIL 336W (History of Modern Philosophy). The course texts are likely to be: Michael Williams, Problems of Knowledge (Oxford University Press) Michael Jubien, Contemporary Metaphysics (Blackwell Publishers) ************************************************************************ Philosophy of Mind Philosophy 474/574 Instructor: Dick Liebendorfer Two important aspects of the mind that pose problems for the study of mind are consciousness and intentionality. Consciousness we are all, we think, familiar with. Intentionality is the property of a mental state that renders it about something. For example, My belief that Obama is President is about, intends Obama. Tables and trees don t have intentionality; so we think. Neither are they consciousness; so we think. What are these phenomena of consciousness and intentionality? How can we know what they are? Can their nature be fruitfully studied in the sciences? If not, where might they
fruitfully be studied? Do animals have minds? Can consciousness or intentionally be realized in a machine? Is mentality the product of evolution? Is there a difference between the ways that we know about ourselves and the ways that we know about one another? Is thought dependent on language? Is either consciousness or intentionality necessarily social? Are consciousness and intentionality interdependent, or can you have one without the other? These and related questions, and answers to them, will be taken up in this course. We will begin with the book Kinds of Minds by Daniel Dennett. Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology and neurobiology, Dennett argues that mentality can be understood in science and that not only do animals have minds but in principle machines, robots can have them. We will then read large portions of two books that challenge aspects of Dennett s views. The Consciousness Mind by David Chalmers challenges the idea that consciousness can be reductively understood in material terms; so, in the natural sciences. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Saul Kripke challenges the idea that intentionality can be reductively understood in material terms; so, in the natural sciences. All three books and their authors are among the most influential in contemporary philosophy. In addition to (portions of) these books there will be some additional reading posted on D2L. PHIL 480/580 Philosophy of Science 3 credits M 3:00 pm 5:50pm Professor Sun Yu What is science? What distinguishes science from non-science? Does science increase our understanding of natural phenomena? What makes scientific explanation explanatory? Can we reduce all sciences to basic physics? These are not the questions that philosophers can readily answer. Neither can they be answered by scientific research itself. Philosophy and science should meet together in order to find the answers. We will in this course explore the central issues of philosophy of science: * What is the nature of science? * Problem of Induction and Falsificationism: What is the relationship between theory and evidence? * Paradigms and Progress: How does scientific knowledge grow? Does science really progress? * Scientific Explanation and the Laws of Nature: What kinds of scientific explanations do we have? Can we have teleological (goal-directed) explanations? If scientific explanations require universal laws, what is the nature of these laws? * Reductionism: What is reductionism in science? Can we reduce all sciences to basic physics? No background knowledge in any specific areas is presupposed. Students from all fields are welcome.