The following descriptions of courses being offered by the Philosophy Department in Summer 2023 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 Summer 2023.
Summer A
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 questions—ones that we’ll be exploring in this course by way of introducing ourselves to some of philosophy’s urgent and enduring inquiries: What makes for a good and meaningful life? Is anything really valuable in itself, or do things just seem valuable because we care a lot about them? Given that we often disagree about values, how can we structure our social lives so that we can all get along, in spite of our disagreements? What really exists in the world, if anything? What is the nature of reality? And, how can we know if and when we’ve found the answers to any of these questions? For that matter, how can we know anything at all? These questions and boundless others will be our touchstones in this course, as we examine both classical and contemporary philosophical texts. (H) (WR)
PHI 2100 Logic — J. Madock
This is a general introduction to formal logic. This course aims to provide students with the instruction and resources necessary to develop skills in logical reasoning and critical thinking. In the first part of the course, students will be introduced to the syntax and semantics of classical propositional logic. We then move on to derivations of propositional logic. In the latter part of the course, there will be a brief introduction to quantifiers and predicate logic, followed by an introduction to some informal fallacies. (M)
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues — C. Becker
Do non-human animals have moral standing, comparable to that of human beings? Is it ever morally permissible to eat animals? Is private gun ownership morally permissible or impermissible? Is abortion morally permissible or impermissible?
These are examples of moral questions about which many of us have strong and often opposing views. In this course, we will examine opposing philosophical arguments and points of view on these urgent moral questions, as well as a class chosen topic. We will come to grips with and critically reflect on the underlying justifications for the various sides of these different debates. In addition, we will look at various normative ethical theories including Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics. This course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement and the Writing (W) requirement (4000 words).
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — S. Heidarifar
In this course, we practice critical and philosophical thinking about the ethical dimension of AI, data, and technology. We start by talking about concrete problems in our daily life. We will then move to more well-shaped normative questions. We will discussion questions such as how technologies are political and what the moral status of the attention economy is. Next, we move to human relationships and discuss topics such as the ethics of love, consent, companionship, and care regarding emerging technologies. In the end, we will focus on data and algorithmic biases, and inequality to become more familiar with some important ethical questions across the field.
Summer B
PHI 1001 Conflict of Ideas — R. Borges
Examination of conflict in the realm of ideas, including both factors (psychological, social, logical) that make conflicts difficult and methods that may help us engage in them in a principled and effective way. Readings are drawn from multiple disciplines, which may include philosophy, history, linguistics, sociology, and cognitive science.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — D. Ortiz
‘Philosophy’ derives from the Greek words philos and sophia, ‘love’ and ‘wisdom’ respectively. However, that tells us very little about what philosophy is and what philosophy studies. Toward that end, philosophy is concerned with systematic theory building. Philosophers study everything from mathematics to ethics. Despite the broad range of topics that are subject to philosophical inquiry, what unites philosophy as a practice is a commitment to developing systematic accounts that can be used to both understand and explain phenomena. In this course, we will be concerned with three questions. First, we will engage ourselves with well-being and happiness, where our central question will be “what does it mean to live a good human life?” Second, we will look at moral theory, where we will be concerned with the question “what makes actions good or bad?” Third, we will take a look at philosophy of religion, where our focal question is “are there rational reasons to believe in the existence of God”. In examining these questions, we will engage with readings from Antiquity to the contemporary era. It is the aim of this course to familiarize students with arguments regarding these three guiding questions. It is not the aim of this course to convince students that one particular account is correct. Students are encouraged to challenge the accounts that they are presented with and to engage in polite and constructive discussion with their peers and instructor. (H) (WR4)
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — J. Costanzo
This course will introduce students to some of the central topics in Western Philosophy. Students will explore, discuss, and think critically about answers to the following questions: What makes life meaningful? What reasons are there for believing in the existence of God? Are the mind and body the same, or are they two different things? What makes an action morally right and what makes a person good? What makes an argument valid? How does capitalism work as a political and economic theory?
Students will write papers, and construct arguments, that engage with these topics. (H) (WR4)
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — J. Simpson
This course introduces students to philosophy by engaging with various readings and arguments, both classical and contemporary, in the history of philosophy. This course will have a four-part structure. The first part of the course will cover arguments for and against the existence of God. The second part of the course will cover various topics in epistemology, with a specific focus on the Regress Problem, Cartesian skepticism, the Gettier Problem, and the Problem of Induction. The third part of the course will be concerned with metaphysics. In this connection, we’ll mainly concentrate on personal identity, free will & moral responsibility, what objects, if any, exist (e.g., do numbers exist? do chairs exist? do persons exist?, etc), and, at the end of the third part, a little bit of meta-ethics. The fourth part of the course will primarily focus on discussion of the three standard normative ethical theories, which are utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Aristotelian virtue theory. (H) (WR4)
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — S. Heidarifar
In this course, we practice critical and philosophical thinking. We start by talking about concrete problems in our daily life. We will then move to more well-shaped normative questions. We will discuss questions such as how care is central to ethics and what equality is. Next we move to social epistemology and discuss topics, such as echo chambers and epistemic injustice and their impacts on our daily life. In the end, we will focus on Islamic philosophy and the history of Western philosophy to become more familiar with some important philosophical questions across history and the world. (H) (WR4)
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — S. Sturm
This course uses philosophical ethics to explore problems raised by cutting-edge technologies. News stories have gotten us used to hearing about social media addiction, the exploitation of personal data for profit, widespread government surveillance of communications, and bias in algorithms that make important decisions about our lives and livelihoods. But if these technologies are morally wrong, why? And is it possible for us to fix them? Philosophy has the conceptual tools to help us to answer these questions with rigor and nuance.
We will begin with theories of technology generally: what it is, what its role is in our lives and our societies, and whether technological advances are inevitable. We will then learn about consequentialism and deontology, two influential philosophical frameworks of normative ethics, and how they analyze moral problems. These are the tools that we will use to tackle four case studies in the ethics of current technology and data. First, we will look at bias encoded in algorithms like COMPAS that make important determinations in our court system. Second, we will consider privacy and the widespread collection of personal data by governments and huge corporations. Third, we will think about the automation of human creative endeavors as, for instance, by ChatGPT and DALL-E. Last, we will discuss human autonomy in an age of pervasive and addictive social media, entertainment, and gaming.
Summer C
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy (UFO) — J. Gillespie
This is a general introduction to philosophy, with an emphasis on actively doing philosophy: understanding what philosophy is, the unique goods one can gain by doing philosophy, and actively engaging in the critical, open-minded thinking and writing characteristic of philosophy. After a brief introduction to philosophy itself and reasoning, we look at some of the most important and provocative questions throughout the discipline’s history. Most of the semester is devoted to three traditional issues: (a) What is knowledge? What can we know? (b) What is free will and is there reason to think we don’t have any free will? (c) What is morality? Are there facts about what is morally right and wrong, or is morality completely subjective? At the end of the semester, we will more briefly explore some famous questions about happiness and the meaning of life. The emphasis throughout the semester is on articulating, thinking through, and writing clearly about such elusive questions and presenting good reasons to endorse one answer over another.
This is an entirely online course. Because there is no regular meeting time during which we all meet to discuss the material, it is especially important to keep up with all assignments, to participate in discussion boards, and to ask for help when needed. While the structure of assignments is designed to ensure that students challenge themselves, it is also designed so as to minimize the amount of stress placed on any particular assignment. Success requires regular and serious effort throughout the semester. (H) (WR4)
PHI 3641 Ethics and Innovation — M. Davis
Grounding in ethical theory and moral reasoning with a focus on changes at both organizational and societal levels, including, for instance, technological innovations, new business practices and legal changes. Examines the rights and responsibilities of those making such changes as well as the conditions that facilitate responsible decision making. (H) (WR4)