Advent 2002

PHILOSOPHY 101: INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHY 101A: GOD, DEATH, AND THE MEANING OF LIFE (FYP) WEB SYLLABUS

PHILOSOPHY 101B: CLASSICAL THEORIES AND CONTEMPORARY ISSUES (GARLAND)

We will study works by three influential thinkers in the history of Western thought: Plato, Descartes, and Nietzsche.   Plato will represent classical Greek philosophy, Descartes will represent the birth of modern philosophy, and Nietzsche will provide a postmodern response to traditional issues.  We will also look at contemporary debates on moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, animal rights, environmental issues, and economic justice. Throughout the course, we will view various films that have philosophical themes, such as "Being There," "The Matrix," and "Wall Street." There will be two hour-exams, several short papers, a final exam, and weekly journals. There will also be several class debates in which students can defend or criticize philosophical views.

PHILOSOPHY 101D: WHY BE MORAL? (MOSER)

We typically suppose that there are some things we ought to do, other things we ought not to do; that some people, characters, and actions deserve our praise while others do not; and that some lives are better or more meaningful than others. These are all suppositions about ethical demands and ideals operating in our lives. But what gives these demands and ideals their authority? Why should we take them seriously? In other words, why be moral? We'll look at various ways of making sense of that question, as well as various attempts, classical and contemporary, to address it. Readings will include Plato's Republic, Kant's  Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, and Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals. Students will be expected to engage critically with the views we discuss in several short papers and writing assignments.

PHILOSOPHY 202: ETHICS (GARLAND)

This course is an introduction to significant alternatives in ethical theory and to the application of these theories to contemporary moral issues. We will read selected works in ethical theory from Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, and then apply these theories to current moral issues, such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, sexual morality, animal rights, environmental concerns, and war and terrorism. Class sessions will incorporate lectures, discussions, and class debates. There will be two hour exams, two short critical papers, and a final exam, as well as weekly journals in which students can reflect on the reading material.

PHILOSOPHY 203: CLASSICAL THOUGHT (PETERS)

This course will examine ancient thought from Homer to Augustine. We will study ancient philosophical and literary thought in its historical, cultural and religious setting. We will pay special attention to how ancient thinkers understood human life, the order of the universe, and the limits of human knowledge and reason. In our class sessions, we will have three primary goals: 1) to understand ancient philosophers within their historical context; 2) to understand their arguments; and (3) to evaluate their arguments. Class sessions will be a mixture of lectures, student discussions and class debates. There will be short critical papers, short personal reflections, a midterm and a final exam.

PHILOSOPHY 235: MEDICAL ETHICS (PETERMAN)

This course is an introduction to ethical issues in medicine. It presupposes no prior coursework in philosophy. We will begin with Lisa Belkin's First, Do No Harm, to see her description of real medical ethics cases. These cases include life and death issues for premature infants, treatment of newborns with severe spina bifada, treatment of illegal aliens, and so forth.  Students will have the chance of proposing their own account of the issues and how best to resolve them. We will then turn to Beauchamp's and Childress'Principles of Medical Ethics, which presents the standard approach to medical ethics issues, in order to see how these issues might more systematically get addressed. We will, afterward, learn how to do medical ethics research on the web. Each student will get to pursue a research topic of his or her own choosing. (This section of the course will also serve to prepare students who might wish to pursue medical ethics student internships at hospital ethics committees.) We will end the semester with the examination of recent debates about the problems posed for medicine by an aging population. There will be two essays and a final take-home exercise. Students will be required to participate in discussion daily.

PHILOSOPHY 308: EPISTEMOLOGY (CONN)

This course will be conducted as a tutorial.  We will meet once a week for lecture and once a week in small groups for tutorial sessions. We will begin by discussing the various forms of skepticism and the challenges they pose against the possibility of human knowledge.  In light of these challenges, we will spend two sessions on the nature of sense perception and the justification of empirical beliefs.  These sessions will be devoted to understanding and (if possible) to deciding between the three main theories of sense perception: direct realism, representative realism, and phenomenalism.  We will subsequently spend two sessions discussing doxastic theories of justification, i.e., theories that state that one's justification for a given belief is solely a function of one's other beliefs.  After this we will spend two weeks discussing the debate between internalist and externalist theories of justification, i.e., the debate between those who affirm and those who deny that the epistemic status of a given belief is solely a function of the cognizer's other beliefs and perceptual states.  After this we will begin a detailed reading of William Alston's Perceiving God.  Although this book is ultimately concerned with the epistemology of religious experience, it has a great deal to say about epistemic justification in general, and about the justification of empirical beliefs in particular.

PHILOSOPHY 312: SYMBOLIC LOGIC (CONN)

An examination of three increasingly powerful systems of logic: sentential logic, monadic predicate logic, and full first-order logic with identity.  Each of the latter two systems is an extension of the first, which is solely concerning with the logical relationships between whole sentences.  These extensions enable us to better capture the logical structure of ordinary language arguments, since they help us (through the use of quantifier expressions for 'some' and 'all', proper names, and variables for individuals and their properties) to represent the internal logical structure of the sentences themselves.  A significant portion of the class will be devoted to working out deductive proofs in these systems. There will a mid-term exam and a comprehensive final.  

PHILOSOPHY 323: CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY (PETERS)

This course will investigate a variety of social, philosophical and academic debates concerning the nature and place of religious beliefs in contemporary society.  We will examine such issues as the conflict of religion and science, the proper role of religious perspectives in higher education, the authority of the Bible, the problem of religious pluralism, and the problem of religious faith and sexuality in contemporary western culture.  This course will seek to understand in a respectful and reasonable manner the views and arguments of the opposing sides in these important debates concerning religious belief in the Twenty-first Century.  (Students ranging from fundamentalists to atheists are all welcome in this course!)  This course will be conducted in a seminar format with student presentations and a semester-long independent project.

PHILOSOPHY 325: PLATO (GARLAND)

We will study some of the early Socratic dialogues, the middle dialogues in which Plato develops the views we normally associate with "Platonism" (especially the Phaedo the Symposium, the Phaedrus, and the Republic, and selected later dialogues.  We will also read some contemporary assessments of Plato's philosophy.  Emphasis will be placed on the ethical views of Socrates and the theories of knowledge, reality, and value which Plato develops and defends in his middle dialogues.  We will look at selected later dialogues, such as the Parmenides and the Timaeus, to see how Plato modifies his theory of Forms to meet crucial objections.  There will be two hour exams, a term paper, and a final exam, as well as weekly responses to the readings.

PHILOSOPHY 411: WITTGENSTEIN (PETERMAN)

We will examine the most important writings of twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.  The first, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and the second, Philosophical Investigations, helped to give rise to two different revolutions in philosophy this century.  In addition to these texts, we will read Ray Monk's biography, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, in order to be able better to understand his positions and views not just as species of philosophical argumentation but also as works of a person on a very specific ethical quest:  both the mystical quest expressed in his early book and the therapeutic quest expressed in his later book are designed to bring the traditional philosophical project to a close and bring us in agreement with human life. The early book generated a view of language famously taken up by the logical positivists in order to show that the sentences of traditional philosophy, ethics, and religion are meaningless.  The second text generated a view of language that is pluralistic, allowing for a wide range of languages including ethical and religious. We will especially focus on the implications of Wittgenstein's views for ethics.  The class will proceed in a seminar format.  There will be ongoing participation in the seminar, a seminar presentation, and an independent paper project.

PHILOSOPHY 444: INDEPENDENT STUDY (Staff)

This option is offered to qualified students who have shown the capacity to work independently. It requires permission of the instructor.