Philosophy Courses

Course Offerings Spring 2013

Course Code	Title/Instructor	Meets
PHIL 101-01	Intro to Philosophy Instructor: Chauncey Maher Course Description: An introduction to Western philosophy through an examination of problems arising in primary sources. How major philosophers in the tradition have treated such questions as the scope of human reason, the assumptions of scientific method, the nature of moral action, or the connections between faith and reason.	1030:MWF STERN 103
PHIL 101-02	Intro to Philosophy Instructor: Jo-Jo Koo Course Description: An introduction to Western philosophy through an examination of problems arising in primary sources. How major philosophers in the tradition have treated such questions as the scope of human reason, the assumptions of scientific method, the nature of moral action, or the connections between faith and reason.	0900:TR DENNY 211
PHIL 102-01	Moral Problems Instructor: Corwin Aragon Course Description: This course is designed to encourage students to think carefully about some of the most hotly contested social and moral problems facing us today. Topics may include issues ranging from the morality of killing enemy noncombatants and the permissibility of euthanasia and abortion to the moral problems associated with racial profiling, torture, and world hunger. The goal throughout will be to focus on the interplay between the relevant science, moral philosophy, and public policy so that students can develop nuanced and informed opinions of their own about some of our most pressing applied ethical issues facing us today.The course fulfills the DIV 1.a. distribution requirement. Offered every semester.	1230:MWF EASTC 405
PHIL 103-01	Logic Instructor: Susan Feldman Course Description: The study and practice of forms and methods of argumentation in ordinary and symbolic languages,focusing on elements of symbolic logic and critical reasoning, including analysis and assessment of arguments in English, symbolizing sentences and arguments,constructing formal proofs of validity in sentential and quantificational logic.This course fulfills the DIV 1.a. distribution requirement and the QR graduation requirement. Offered every semester, or every three or four semesters.	1500:TF DENNY 104
PHIL 202-01	17th & 18th Century Philosophy Instructor: Susan Feldman Course Description: This course treats the Rationalists, Empiricists and Kant, with particular emphasis on issues in epistemology and metaphysics, such as the possibility and limits of human knowledge, the role of sense perception and reason in knowledge, the nature of substance, God and reality.Prerequisite: one prior course in philosophy or permission of the instructor.	1030:TR DENNY 103
PHIL 203-01	19th Century Philosophy Instructor: Jo-Jo Koo Course Description: A seminar centered on a major text or texts of significant 19th century philosophers such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx or Nietzsche.Prerequisite: one prior course in philosophy or permission of the instructor.	1330:TF EASTC 301
PHIL 251-01	Philosophy of Religion Instructor: Crispin Sartwell Course Description: This course focuses on philosophical issues arising from religious belief and practice.Topics treated may include: the existence and nature of god or gods; the contested relation of a god to moral values; faith and reason as sources of belief or ways of believing, as expressed in classic texts by thinkers such as Aquinas, Hume, Kierkegaard, and William James, as well as in contemporary texts. Prerequisite: one prior course in philosophy or permission of the instructor.	1130:MWF WEISS 221
PHIL 252-01	Philosophy of Art Instructor: Crispin Sartwell Course Description: Cross-listed with ARTH 252-01.	0930:MWF WEISS 221
PHIL 254-01	Philosophy of Science Instructor: Chauncey Maher Course Description: This course considers such issues as the distinction between science and non-science; the relation of evidence to scientific theories; truth and rationality in science; competition among theories; the nature of scientific explanation; methods of scientific thinking; the impact of science on society. Prerequisite: one prior course in philosophy or permission of the instructor.	0900:TR EASTC 300
PHIL 256-01	Philosophy of Mind Instructor: Chauncey Maher Course Description: This course investigates the nature of the mind and its relation to the brain, body, and the surrounding world. Analyses of these topics will draw on information from fields such as psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, or computer science. Prerequisite: one previous course in philosophy, or permission of the instructor.	1330:MR EASTC 300
PHIL 391-01	Phenomenology Instructor: Jo-Jo Koo Course Description: Phenomenology is the most influential and diverse movement in 20th century European philosophy. Other important movements in that century, e.g., existential phenomenology (Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir), philosophical hermeneutics (e.g., Gadamer, Ricoeur), the philosophical reflections on the significance of the other (e.g., Levinas), each originate in some shape or form either as direct appropriations of or critical reactions to various approaches in the phenomenological movement that Edmund Husserl founded at the beginning of the 20th century. What is it about phenomenology that spawned such a diversity and richness of critical appropriations? Is phenomenology a distinctive method and practice, a set of doctrines, or a particular attitude or stance toward what it analyzes? This courses introduces its students to a few of the key approaches and themes that phenomenology has inspired. We will begin by first learning to see and do things phenomenologically rather than trying initially to understand and master its formidable technical vocabulary and doctrines. Toward this end we will start by reading John Russons Human Experience. Once we get a working sense for what it is to see and do things phenomenologically for ourselves, we will then be better equipped to read and understand Husserls Cartesian Meditations and perhaps a few of his other excerpted writings. We then turn to consider how subsequent philosophers trained in phenomenology like Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, or Levinas criticized but also extended this tradition in fruitful and radical ways. Prior study of modern Western philosophers like Descartes and Kant will be a significant advantage as background preparation for taking this course.	1330:W EASTC 212
PHIL 391-02	Adv. Topics: Global Justice Instructor: Corwin Aragon Course Description: Our lives, are now, more than ever, deeply intertwined with the lives of not only our family and friends, or our neighbors and fellow citizens, but also with the lives of distant strangers. Processes of cultural, economic, and political globalization have restructured systems of social interaction, and these new forms of social interaction generate new circumstances of justice. Consequently, new philosophical and moral questions arise: How should we structure global systems of social interaction? How should the benefits and burdens generated by these systems be distributed? What are our responsibilities to work toward a more just world? This seminar explores these kinds of questions by engaging some of the central topics in the field, such as state legitimacy and sovereignty, the erosion of the Westphalian order, cultural imperialism and recognition, environmental justice, human migration, war and terrorism, responsibility for extreme poverty, and food justice. We will engage these issues in a manner that is grounded in social scientific research and pays particular attention to categories of social difference, such as class, gender, nationality, and race.	1500:MR EASTC 212
PHIL 500-01	Independent Study Instructor: Corwin Aragon Course Description:	:
PHIL 500-02	Independent Study Instructor: Chauncey Maher Course Description:	:
PHIL 500-03	Independent Study Instructor: Chauncey Maher Course Description:	: