The following descriptions of courses being offered by the Philosophy Department in Summer 2024 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 2024.
Summer A
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — A. Gavrilos
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 does it mean to pursue philosophy? What can we know about the world? Are the mind and body the same, or are they two different things? How should we live our lives? What makes an action morally right and what makes a person good? This will be done through the reading and close study of texts of both historical and modern philosophical importance. Additionally, this Introduction to Philosophy course aims to provide students with the instruction and resources necessary to develop skills in critical thinking, collaborative discussion, writing, and building strong arguments.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. Borges
{Variable topics introduction to philosophy through study of traditional questions about the existence of God, the nature of the mind, the definition of good, freedom of the will, and criteria of truth and knowledge. (H) (WR)}
PHI 2100 Logic — J. Madock
Introductory-level survey of different methods of formal and informal analysis of the logical structure of propositions and arguments. Topics include syllogistic logic, propositional logic, quantification logic, inductive logic, informal fallacies, and probability.
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues — Dr. Simpson
This course is designed to familiarize students with contemporary moral issues. We will discuss abortion, the ethics of eating meat, topics in environmental ethics, including climate change, the ethics of charitable giving, the ethics of punishment, racial bias in machine learning, the black box problem for machine learning, and the ethics of autonomous weapons systems. We will also discuss the main theories in meta-ethics and normative ethics. (H) (WR)
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — M. Steele
This course surveys important and recent ways in which emergent technologies give rise to ethical issues. The course will include discussions on the ethical implications of using machine learning algorithms in decision making and predictive policing, deploying autonomous weapons systems in war, and the collection and usage of big data. The overall purpose of the course is to pair theoretical discussions in ethics with concrete and new issues in emerging technologies.
Summer B
PHI 1001 Conflict of Ideas — Dr. Borges
It’s been suggested that war is the continuation of politics by different means (Klaus von Clausewitz). Some took that suggestion to mean that politics was the continuation of war by other means (Lenin). But, if war and politics are simply different ways in which we handle disagreement between people, within nations, and between nations, the analogy seems reasonable. War and politics sit at different ends of the same spectrum – ways in which we disagree. But, if the choice between the conflict of ideas and real conflict is so obvious (politics harm ideas, while wars harm real people), why do real conflicts keep happening? How can we understand what happens when people disagree-especially when they disagree about important or emotionally powerful issues? How can we resolve our disagreements in a principled fashion? Since the issues are important, we cannot just agree to disagree: we must learn how to have a fair fight. But how do we fight fair on the battleground of ideas?
The focus of the course will be on the conflict of ideas, and on how students can make a positive and lasting impact on the conflicts they will encounter in their own lives. To that end, students will learn about multiple aspects of intellectual conflict: psychological aspects of conflict that stand in the way of conscientious dialogue, questions about rhetoric and its role in manipulation, facing and working with our own cognitive limitations, and structuring debate and dialogue in a way that should help us make progress without simply compromising for the sake of peace. They will also practice and witness intellec- tual disagreements as they debate their fellow students and observe others engage in intellectual disagree- ment. In virtue of the complexity of the social phenomenon that is intellectual disagreement, students will be exposed to readings in multiple disciplines. Those include the disciplines of economics, statistics, history, feminist ethics, psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, biology, and theology (see schedule for details). Assignments include short argumentative essays, reports on observed conflicts, and practicing and evaluating in-class debates.
Prereq: Restricted to undergraduate degree-seeking students.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — M. Davis
One way to grasp what a course will entail is to learn what questions will be asked in it. In this course, some of the questions we will ask include, “Is morality subjective?”, “Does God exist?”, and “Do we have free will?” In the pursuit of the answers to these questions, we are all expected to examine and challenge our beliefs. Our pursuit of truth will encourage the development of problem solving, reasoning, and argumentative skills that will serve to make us better thinkers and, hopefully, better people. (H) (WR 4000)
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:
- In a digital world of bots, deep fakes, and echo chambers, how can we genuinely know that what we see—or read—is true?
- What makes life meaningful, and how can life be meaningful in even in times when there seems to be no progress and no purpose?
- Is free will real, or only an illusion? Moral responsibility? Merit?
- What makes you you? How do you remain the same person from birth until death though every cell of your body will have been replaced several times throughout your life?
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 an uncertain world with very few 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.
This course counts towards the Humanities (H) general education requirement and the Writing (W) requirement (4000 words).
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — Dr. 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 two-part structure. The first part of the course will cover some topics in the philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of mind, meta-ethics, and the three standard normative ethical theories, which are utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and Aristotelian virtue theory. The second part of the course will cover applied philosophical issues in both ethics and epistemology, including abortion, meat-eating, conspiracy theories, the use of autonomous weapons in war, among others.
This course fulfills the Gordon Rule 4,000 Writing Requirement and the Humanities Requirement for General Education.
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy — M. Steele
The main purpose of this course is to introduce students to some of the central problems in philosophy by engaging with a selection of historical and contemporary readings. The topics will include some of the most prominent discussions in epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. The main goal of the course is for students to learn how to identify, paraphrase, evaluate and construct good arguments orally and in written form.
PHI 3681 Ethics, Data, and Technology — S. Sturm
New technologies pose new ethical problems, and this class is an examination of those problems through the lens of established theories of ethics in philosophy. Because the issues addressed are in the realm of applied ethics, the class is built around case studies rather than pure theory. The goal is to get you to think deeply about current problems and their possible solutions. Work on the case studies will also be done in groups, rather than individually, since collaboration to propose solutions to current ethical dilemmas is a valuable skill; although philosophy sometimes seems like an individual endeavor, this class works from the premise that it should not be.
Summer C
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy (UFO) — J. Costanzo
The patient and thorough exploration of philosophical questions is an ideal way to develop skills in clear writing and critical thinking. This course introduces the discipline of philosophy with a focus on developing those skills. Most of the semester is devoted three traditional issues: (a) What is knowledge? What can we know? (b) What is free will? Is there reason to think we don’t have any free will? (c) What is morality all about? Are there facts about what is morally right and wrong? At the end of the semester, we will more briefly explore some famous questions about happiness and the meaning of life. The emphasis throughout is on writing clearly about such elusive questions and presenting good reasons to endorse one answer over another.
PHI 3641 Ethics and Innovation — J. Simpson
This course is designed to familiarize students with ethics and some of the ethical issues surrounding innovation. We will discuss ethical concerns arising from innovations in data science, modern warfare, and the food industry. We will also discuss the main theories in meta-ethics and normative ethics. Discussion topics include, inter alia, racial bias in machine learning, the black box problem for machine learning, the attention economy, the ethics of eating factory-farmed meat, technological unemployment, and moral responsibility for autonomous weapons systems. (H) (WR)