The following descriptions of courses being offered by the Philosophy Department in Fall 2022 were submitted by the course instructors. Exceptions are descriptions in braces {…}, which have been adopted from the Undergraduate Catalogue (students desiring further information regarding the specific content of courses with bracketed descriptions are advised to contact the instructors directly).
Specific information regarding the dates, times, and locations of these courses may be found in the Registrar’s official Schedule of Courses for Fall 2022.
2000 Level Courses
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. Borges
The goal of this course is to introduce students to some of the main issues in Western Philosophy. We will do this by critically approaching classical and contemporary readings on question such as ‘What is philosophy?’, ‘What is knowledge?’, ‘How should we act?’, and ‘What is the meaning of life?’. A further goal is to introduce students to the methods and tools philosophers use when approaching philosophical questions. This course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement and the Writing (W) requirement (4000 words).
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. Dorst
This course is a general introduction to philosophical questions, methods, discussion, reading, and writing. It presumes no background in philosophy. We will be surveying various philosophical topics in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. Some examples of questions we will be addressing are: What evidence is there for or against the existence of God? How can we be sure that there is an external world? Is the mind distinct from the brain? Do we have free will (and if not, what are the consequences for ethics)? What distribution of social goods is demanded by justice? Throughout the course, there will be a heavy emphasis on learning to discuss and write about philosophical issues, so class discussion will be an important component.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. Pismenny
This course will introduce you to some of the main topics of philosophy. Philosophy addresses some of the most fundamental questions in life. The main tool by which Philosophy addresses these questions is the human capacity to reason. You will find that philosophical answers are based on reasoned arguments, which analyze and seek to justify beliefs. Philosophy, therefore, is a sort of self-examination, in which you discover what you think, and then reflect on whether your opinions are really worth holding. To look critically at your own ideas is the essence of the life of reason.
During this course you will examine your views on several core philosophical topics such as what makes a good argument, the nature of morality, and social justice. You will read philosophical texts, analyze their arguments and evaluate their answers to the questions of the course, see how philosophical concepts can help you understand practical dilemmas, and express your ideas through arguments – both verbal and written – which present your reasons for holding your beliefs.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. Rick
If you’re reading this, you might be doing so because you’re looking for the answer to some questions. That’s good! Asking questions is a very philosophical thing to do! Now, maybe one of your questions is the following: What is this Introduction to Philosophy course going to be about? Well, you know how sometimes people answer a question with a question? Here’s an answer to your question with a series of five questions – ones that we’ll be exploring in this course by way of introducing ourselves to some of philosophy’s urgent and enduring inquiries: Should I believe in God? Should I believe in anything? How should I live? How should we live? The first two questions explore perennial topics in the subfields of metaphysics and epistemology, while the latter two questions explore perennial topics in the philosophical subfields of ethics and political theory. These four questions will be our touchstones in this course, as we examine both classical and contemporary philosophical texts, but boundless others will surely emerge. This course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement and the Writing (W) requirement (4000 words).
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. Ross
In this class we will explore several fundamental philosophical questions that are at the core of our lived experience, especially those that have been put center-stage by recent global events.
- How can life be meaningful in time when there seems to be no progress and no purpose?
- Is free will real, or only an illusion? Moral responsibility? Merit?
- In a world full of filter bubbles, “fake news”, and echo chambers, how can we genuinely know that what we see—or read—is true?
- Do we have core social values? Is free speech valuable for its own sake or can its value be outweighed by other considerations?
- To what extent is our perception of the social world an illusion, and can acknowledging this change how we see the world?
A philosophy course cannot give you the answers to questions like these, but studying philosophy can help us understand why we shouldn’t expect quick and easy answers to such questions. Philosophy helps us see that our world is more complex, nuanced, and uncertain than it may first appear. In this way, it also helps us live authentically—an “examined life”. When we know what we value, when we see ourselves and our world more clearly, we give ourselves a method for making the best decisions we can in a world with no absolute guarantees.
Learning how to approach problems with a philosophical mindset will help you find and ask better questions, ones that can move a conversation—and a society—forward.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. J. Rothschild
Content. In this course we will engage some of the fundamental questions and classical texts in philosophy. Central topics include questions about what human beings are and what we need; questions about the possibility of morality and about the construction of just political arrangements; questions about human understanding and its limits; questions about the being of humans in the world; and questions about the ways we are determined from without and the ways we are free to determine ourselves. We will track our various authors’ approaches to these philosophical concerns, examine their arguments about how these concerns relate to one another, and consider how the course texts make a case for the relevance of these questions to our own human lives.
Method. This course also has significant goals in building skills of philosophical thinking, speaking, and writing.
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues — Dr. Rick
Do non-human animals have moral standing, comparable to that of human beings? Is it ever morally permissible to eat animals? What is sexism, and should prostitution be ethically and legally permissible or prohibited? What is racism, and are affirmative action policies morally justified or morally bankrupt? What is the most ethically justified immigration policy – one of largely open or largely closed borders? Given the persistence of vast global poverty in our world, what moral duties do those of us in wealthy nations have to persons in impoverished states? Should private gun ownership be morally permissible or impermissible? Is climate change a significant issue for individual morality? Are individuals morally responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions, despite the fact that individual actions seem to make little difference to climate change?
These are examples of moral questions about which many of us have strong and often opposing opinions. And, just as we disagree on many of these issues, so do many philosophers, political theorists, and economists. In this course, we examine opposing philosophical arguments and points of view on these urgent moral questions. The governing aim of our course will be to come to grips with and critically reflect on the underlying justifications for the various sides of these different debates. This course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement and the Writing (W) requirement (4000 words).
IDS 2935 (Quest 1): Cultural Animals — Dr. Rick
Humans are cultural animals. On the one hand, we are biologically evolved animals – members of nature’s kingdom, bound by its universal laws or norms. On the other hand, we are creatures of culture, variably shaped by the influences and innovations of our particular societies and communities. Given our dual citizenship within these domains, questions and challenges emerge regarding the boundaries and allegiances between human nature and human culture. These limits are especially urgent with respect to understanding the contours and content of morality. In Cultural Animals, we will examine the interplay between the ‘natural’ and the ‘cultural’ aspects of our lives, with particular emphasis on exploring how these often-coordinating, yet potentially-competing, forces serve to shape our moral practices both within the human community and beyond the human community – specifically with respect to our interactions with and treatment of nonhuman animals.
IDS 2935 (Quest 1): Idea of Happiness — N. Rothschild
Every person wants to have a good life. But what is it to live well? This is a question about the nature of human happiness and well-being and how they may be achieved, and it was fundamental to Western philosophy at its inception. Socrates famously declared that the unexamined life is not worth living. In doing so, he was calling for a rigorous and theoretical investigation into our beliefs about what makes a life go well because he thought such an investigation was essential to our lives going well. But was he right? It is easy to say “yes,” and be done with it. But do we really need to think deeply about what we care about in order to have a good life?
This Quest 1 course addresses the question that we cannot help but ask ourselves, “How should I live?” Drawing primarily on the disciplines of Philosophy and Classics, in conjunction with close analysis of works of literature, drama, and film, this course will expose students to both historical and contemporary perspectives on well-being and happiness. The readings have been selected to represent a number of distinct perspectives, both philosophical and non-philosophical, and to help students think for themselves about the kind of lives they want to live. Students will be encouraged to find in historical texts material relevant to their own lives, not despite, but because of the fundamentally different assumptions and commitments that animate views which are thousands of years old.
3000 Level Courses
PHH 3100 Ancient Greek Philosophy — N. Rothschild
This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the main ideas of the thinkers who stand at the beginning of the western philosophical tradition: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophers of the Hellenistic era. To give a sense of the topics that will be explored, here are two examples of issues that have been taken up in the course’s previous incarnations. Plato famously presents knowledge as a daunting achievement and claims that a life organized around the pursuit of knowledge, i.e., philosophy, is the best life for a human being. Understanding these views depends on what Plato means by knowledge. This course examines Plato’s developing conception of knowledge and its objects (the things known) and the way in which this epistemology and metaphysics entails the view that happiness is a form of love. In contemporary philosophy, Aristotle is probably best known as the inspiration for the ethical theory known as virtue ethics. This course offers an introduction to Aristotle’s ethics that seeks to contextualize it within Aristotle’s metaphysics of activity and account of life. Like Plato, Aristotle believes that to be a “good person” is to be a good human being. Thus, he thinks that figuring out how we should live (ethics), depends on understanding that our way of being is a form of constantly active animal life (metaphysics and biology).
PHH 3200 Medieval Philosophy — Dr. J. Palmer
Medieval philosophy, or the philosophy of Western Europe between Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance, can broadly be characterized as the period when philosophers sought to integrate philosophical speculation with the doctrines of the major religious traditions, primarily those of the Christian church, but also those of Judaism and Islam. Although medieval philosophers tended to approach philosophical problems from a religious or theological perspective, their approach remained essentially rational and thus properly philosophical. This course will focus on some of the period’s major philosophical problems, organized into three major units: (I) the related problems of free will, divine foreknowledge, and future contingents; (II) the set of problems normally referred to as “the problem of universals”; and (III) problems pertaining to our knowledge of God’s existence and attributes. We shall attend closely to the positions and arguments developed by some of the medieval period’s major thinkers in the Latin West, including (in chronological order): Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.
PHH 3400 Modern Philosophy — Dr. Duncan
PHH3400 is an introduction to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophy. In the class, we will focus on four prominent works of the period: René Descartes’ 1641 Meditations, G.W. Leibniz’s 1686 Discourse on Metaphysics, John Locke’s 1689 Essay concerning Human Understanding, and David Hume’s 1748 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. We will also look, more briefly, at the views of some of their contemporaries, including Thomas Hobbes, Nicolas Malebranche, Margaret Cavendish, and Mary Shepherd. The course will focus on the philosophers’ views in metaphysics and epistemology, but will also consider views in the physical sciences and in ethics. Assessment will involve two papers, a final exam, and some other smaller items.
This course, together with PHH 3100, aims to give students an understanding of major questions addressed in the history of Western philosophy, the range of answers offered to these questions, and the methods employed in addressing them. As well as meeting requirements for the Philosophy major and minor, PHH3400 counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement.
PHH 3610 Happiness and Well-Being — Dr. L. Grant
What makes our lives go better or worse? According to the hedonist, our lives go better when we experience pleasure and avoid pain. According to desire-based theories, our lives go better when we get what we want. Objective list theorists say that a variety of different goods – such as pleasure, friendship, and knowledge – are essential components of a life worth living.
In this course, we will consider these and other theories of the nature of wellbeing in the context of broader philosophical questions about life, death, and the afterlife. These questions will include:
- Is it always good to get what you want?
- Is death always bad? For whom?
- Can things that happen after we die make our lives go worse?
- Should we want to live forever?
- Is it better to burn out or to fade away?
The main aim of this course is to have you think about these and related questions in a philosophically rigorous way. This means formulating arguments, articulating opposing views, and above all, thinking critically.
PHI 3130 Symbolic Logic — Dr. Ray
The course is designed to provide the student with a basic working knowledge of first-order logic and semantics, and familiarize him or her with some basic metalogical results. We will cover basic topics in elementary logic including: propositional, quantificational, identity, free, and modal logics, formal semantics, soundness and completeness. We will also formulate the philosophical underpinnings of our subject with special care.
PHI 3300 Theory of Knowledge — Dr. Borges
This course aims at enabling the student to think critically about some of the central issues in the theory of knowledge. Among other issues, we will discuss (i) the nature of knowledge, (ii) the difference (if any) between knowledge and true belief, (iii) the distinction between perceptual and inferential knowledge, and (iv) whether knowledge is possible (skepticism). Classical and contemporary readings will be assigned. This course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement.
PHI 3420 Philosophy of Social Science — Dr. D. Grant
In this course, we will consider core questions in the philosophy of social science, with an emphasis on the explanation of social facts. How should go about explaining social facts, such as the fact that the crime rate is lower in Canada than in the United States? Can we explain such facts entirely by appeal to facts about individuals—such as what they believe and want—or do we need to appeal to facts about social structures as well? What are social structures, anyway? What does it mean to say that a scientific theory is “objective,” and are explanations in the social sciences “objective” in that sense? In exploring these questions, we will engage closely with recent work in the philosophy of social science.
PHI 3500 Metaphysics — Dr. Ross
Metaphysics is the study of the fundamental nature of reality. This course will cover several core topics in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Topics we will likely cover (and the main questions associated with them) are:
- The Mind/Body Problem: Persons seem to consist of both minds and bodies, but what is the relation between these? Bodies are paradigmatic physical objects, and if any non-physical entities exist, thoughts and mental states are top contenders. But our minds certainly seem to control our bodily actions; how could a non-physical entity interact with the physical world? Or might minds be physical, despite first appearances?
- Identity; Type and Token: There are many relations that can hold between multiple individuals, and many ways that several individuals can be “the same” in some sense. But there is a special relation, self-identity, that an individuals only holds towards itself and nothing else. Understanding the difference between this kind of identity relation and other kinds of “sameness” is key to understanding a host of puzzling philosophical problems.
- Time (& a bit of Space): What is time, exactly? Is time real? Is it an objective sort of thing? How is time related to space? Is time travel theoretically possible (is it physically possible)?
- Personal Identity: How is it that one person remains the same person throughout enormous changes in their lifetime? How do other, ordinary things, persist through change? Does anything really persist through change? Is there any such thing as the self at all, or is it just a very robust illusion?
PHI 3633 Bioethics — Dr. Gardner
Bioethics is the study of ethical issues involving the biological and medical sciences. It includes questions about how health care providers ought to treat their patients; how medical researchers ought to set up and carry out their studies; and how everyone ought to treat present and future generations of human and nonhuman life forms. This course will equip you with some of the concepts, skills, and information you will need in order to think critically about these and related questions.
PHI 3650 Moral Philosophy — Dr. Ahlberg
In this course we will read some of the influential theories, classical texts, and contemporary reflections in the field of moral philosophy. Our exploration will primarily focus on the questions of normative ethics, such as: What fundamental principles, if any, should govern our ethical decisions? What constitutes a good life, or makes a human being good? What kinds of human relationships are worth having or striving for? But we will also briefly address some questions regarding the relationship between moral theory and lived human experience. The bulk of the requirements for the course will include take-home essays, and in addition students will be asked to complete several short writing assignments throughout the semester.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — Dr. D. Grant
In this course, we will explore questions about how emerging technologies should be designed and regulated. What does it mean to say that an algorithm is “biased” against members of a particular social group? Should we be concerned about the fact that technology companies such as Facebook gather vast amounts of data about our online activities? What does it mean to say that a machine learning algorithm is a “black box,” and is there something unfair about using such algorithms to decide how to treat people? As we investigate these and other questions about emerging technologies, we will draw on concepts and readings from a variety of different fields, including philosophy, economics, computer science, data science, and law.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — Dr. Gardner
In this course we will use philosophical methodology to understand various ethical issues at the intersection of technology studies and data science. Some of those issues include the reliance on artificial intelligence to make policing and sentencing decisions in the criminal justice system; the allegations that Facebook and social media companies have caused psychological or political harm; the use of autonomous weapons in war; and government surveillance.
PHI 3930 Special Topics: Philosophy of Love and Sex — Dr. Pismenny
Love and sex are essential to human life. In this course you will be asked to reflect on the most intimate spheres of human experience, addressing questions such as what is love? What kinds of love are there? How can we distinguish between them? What is the relationship between love and reason? In what sense if any are beloveds irreplaceable? What is the relationship between love and sex? What is sexual desire? What can transgender identity tell us about gender? How does gender and sex relate to sexual orientation and romantic relationships? Is polyamory ethically superior to monogamy?
PHI 3930 Special Topics: Philosophy of Perception — Dr. E. Palmer
Perceptual experience has a certain phenomenology: such experiences seem to be our direct awareness of and access to the external world. That is, via perceptual experience we seem to be directly aware of and accessing objects and events with their properties and relations. What’s more, perceptual experience is crucial to justifying our beliefs about the external world, beliefs such as There is a black cat, It’s raining, and I’m typing. However, arguments from illusion and hallucination seem to threaten both our direct awareness of the external world as well as perceptual experiences’ ability to justify our beliefs about it. Philosophers have offered various responses to such arguments, the most notable being Sense-Data theories, Intentionalist or Content theories, and Disjunctivist theories. In this course, we will survey those theories, evaluating them on the basis of their epistemological implications as well as their ability to respect the phenomenology of perceptual experiences.
4000 Level Courses
PHH 4141 Seminar in Ancient Philosophy: Aristotle’s Ethics — Dr. J. Rothschild
This course will be an advanced look at Aristotelian ethics. Readings will be drawn from Aristotle’s ethics, from commentators on Aristotle, and from contemporary virtue ethicists who work in the Aristotelian tradition. The class will be a true seminar: students should expect to take a substantial role leading class discussion, and to write several short reading papers as well as a longer paper at the end of the semester. Prerequisites: one prior course in philosophy. Recommended but not required: prior coursework in ancient philosophy and/or moral philosophy.
PHH 4930 Seminar in a Major Philosopher: Wittgenstein — Dr. Dorst
This is an advanced course focusing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially his later work in Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential philosophers of all time, though his work is notoriously challenging to interpret. With that in mind, our main goal will be to understand the texts, and their context, as opposed to evaluating them. Along the way, we will address questions in areas such as philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of mathematics. Some such questions include the following:
- What is meaning?
- What is understanding?
- What happens when you understand a word, a sentence, a rule, or a command?
- Do we have infallible, direct access to our own mental states?
- In what sense, if any, are our mental states private?
- What is the relation between a name and the thing it refers to?
- What is the difference between following a rule and merely acting in accord with a rule?
At the end of the course, once we have achieved a general understanding of Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy, we will consider some contemporary applications.
PHI 4320 Philosophy of Mind — Dr. L. Grant
Psychology and cognitive science are concerned primarily with how the mind operates. Philosophy of Mind, in contrast, is concerned primarily with what the mind is. This course introduces students to some of the central, classic problems in the philosophy of mind, focusing on issues concerning the relationship between the mental and the physical, and the nature of consciousness. We will ask questions like: Could there be minds without brains? What does it take to have a mind? Can science fully explain how it feels to have experiences, like being hungry or seeing red?
The main aim of this course is to have you think about these and related questions in a philosophically rigorous way. This means formulating arguments, articulating opposing views, and above all, thinking critically.
Though this course will serve as an introduction to these issues, it is nonetheless only suitable for advanced undergraduates with a few philosophy courses under their belt; this is conceptually very difficult material. However, with effort, this course should also be deeply rewarding, and equip you with many new conceptual tools that will be valuable in any area of philosophy.
PHI 4930 Special Topics: Philosophy of Action — Dr. Ray
This is an upper-division introduction to the philosophy of action — which is concerned with the nature of actions and human agency, and such things as intending, planning and trying, the giving of reasons for action and action explanations, practical deliberation, choosing, weakness of the will, and the nature of collective action.
- What do you do when you do? Some philosophers have thought all you can ever do is move your body. Or that maybe all we really ever do is try to do things and the rest is up to the world.
- We are happy to think of some things that happen when we act as expressions of our agency, but want to think of other things as merely consequences. And we think sometimes this makes a moral difference. But what is the real difference between what you do and what else happens — and does that difference fall in line with the moral distinctions we wanted to make?
- We seem often to suffer failures of will. We mean well and intend to do one thing (eat well), but then we end up doing something else (cake!) that we ourselves think less good. What is going on in such cases? Are we just out of control? Or are we really doing what we really wanted all along? And doesn’t that make us sort of crummy? (Cake!)
- It has been thought that we have a special kind of access to our knowledge of our own actions. What does this come to?
- We think of actions as fundamentally explicable. But what should we say about our practice of giving explanations of our actions? How do such explanations (when we are not just making excuses for ourselves) actually relate to the doing of the things we do?
The concerns in philosophy of action are relevant to many other areas of philosophy — to the discourse on freedom of the will in metaphysics, discussions of rationality in epistemology, questions of moral responsibility in ethics, as well fundamental questions about collective will, collective action and the standing of social institutions in social and political philosophy, and, for example, the question of animal minds in philosophy of mind, and the role of the emotions in moral psychology.
Please join me for this exploration of the nature of action.