Instructors’ Course Descriptions for Fall 2012
The following descriptions of courses being offered by the Philosophy Department in Fall 2012 were submitted by the course instructors. Exceptions are descriptions in brackets {…}, 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 2012.
If the instructor is designated as ‘Staff’, the actual instructor for the course has yet to be determined. If you are looking for a complete syllabus for a course, check the Syllabi area for availability.
Descriptions
PHI 2010 Introduction to Philosophy - Dr. Westmoreland
This course is an introduction to some of the central questions in philosophy, including How do we do philosophy? and Who are we? To investigate these questions we will encounter some classic texts as well as approaches prevalent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Students will study selections of works by Plato, Descartes, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and others. The course divides into three sections. In the first section we will read several of Plato’s dialogues. We will use these dialogues to develop what philosophical inquiry is, how to do it, and what may be at stake in doing philosophy. In the second section we will turn to theoretical philosophy, looking to texts in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. In the third section we will examine texts in practical philosophy that relate to ethics and social & political philosophy.
PHH 3100 Ancient Greek Philosophy - Dr. Palmer
This course is designed to familiarize students with some of the main ideas of those thinkers who stand at the beginning of the western philosophical tradition. Although it concentrates on the three great philosopher of the Classical phase of Greek philosophy – Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – some attention will also be given to their predecessors and successors in the Presocratic and Hellenistic phases. PHH 3100 is the first part of the Philosophy Department’s 3000-level history of philosophy sequence. Together with PHH 3400: Modern Philosophy, PHH 3100 aims to give students an understanding the major questions addressed, the range of answers offered, and the methods employed in the history of Western philosophy. PHH 3100 is required of all philosophy majors and meets an area requirement for the minor. It also counts towards the Humanities and International General Education requirements.
PHH 3100 Modern Philosophy - Dr. Duncan
This course is an introduction to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophy. We will focus on four prominent philosophical works of the period: Descartes’s Discourse on the Method, Spinoza’s Ethics, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. We will also look more briefly of the work of several of their contemporaries. The course will concentrate on the philosophers’ views in metaphysics and epistemology, but will also consider views in the physical sciences and in ethics. Assessment will involve papers, a final exam, and some other smaller items. As well as meeting requirements for the Philosophy major and minor, PHH3400 counts towards the Humanities (H) and International (N) general education requirements.
PHH 4420 Seminar in Modern Philosophy: Hume - Dr. Biro
A seminar on the philosophy of David Hume.
PHI 2630 Contemporary Moral Issues - Dr. D’Amico
This course is designed to provide an introduction to philosophy by way of introducing students to the central philosophical topics of ethics and political philosophy. The readings, which range from moderate to difficult, focus largely on contemporary moral controversies. The course also includes readings on different moral theories and discussions of moral reasoning and justification. The primary requirements are in the form of take home essays. These are always in the form of objective essay questions requiring a clear understanding of the readings as well as their critical assessment. Attendance at discussion sections and lectures is necessary for success in the course and it is required.
PHM 3202 Political Philosophy - Dr. Ahlberg
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to contemporary thinking on a range of issues in political philosophy. In the first part of the course we will read John Rawls’ restatement of his very influential theory of justice as fairness, and proceed by looking at a series of alternative views: the capabilities approach, Libertarianism, communitarianism, and a liberal group rights approach. The course will conclude with some particular challenges to thinking about ideal justice, including the unique issues raised by gender, disability, and the family. Students can expect several short writing assignments throughout the semester, as well as two take-home essays and a final in-class exam. Participation in class discussion will be integral to students’ success in the class, and attendance will be required.
PHI 3420 Philosophy of the Social Sciences - Dr. D’Amico
This course concerns the philosophical problems raised by such fields as psychology, sociology, economics, and history. The course will be divided into three sections. First, we will consider issues concerning scientific explanation. Specifically, the course will consider whether these fields produce causal explanations or something different such as understanding. Second, the course will examine various topics that grow out of issues in the first section. These will include accounts within the theory of action, the question of whether intentional mental states enter into social explanations, the question of whether persons are proper objects of inquiry, and the status of law-based explanations in social science. Finally, the course will cover what might be called the metaphysics of social life. We will examine, for example, the reality of collective intentions, the status of artifacts, and the nature of institutions. There will be at least two take home essay exams required in the course as well as student presentations on the readings. There will be an anthology of readings and some examples of explanatory strategies in some of the social sciences discussed.
PHI 3500 Metaphysics - Dr. Biro
What conditions must a thing satisfy to be the same thing at different times? Must a material object occupy a single continuous region of space of can it be scattered? Can two things be in the same place at the same time? Questions like these have a long history, but we will focus on some recent work on them (and some related ones). Requirements: two examinations and a paper.
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? As participation will be integral to your success in this course, attendance will be required. Students should expect a combination of take-home essays and in-class exams.
PHI 3693 Ethics of Communication - Dr. Auxter
In this course we will cover themes and topics in philosophical discussions of the ethics of communication. We will read both classical and contemporary texts in the Western, African, and Latin American Traditions.
Topics:
Across cultures, languages, geographies, and histories, what counts as communication? What is the significance of dialogue? What are the limits of the universe of discourse? What are the parameters and minimum conditions of meaningful communication? Do souls communicate with souls across the boundaries of life and death? Is communication only human to human? Animal to animal? How do answers to these questions affect choices we make about the possibilities for interaction and the development of relations? What values are at stake? How are choices defined?
Requirements: There will be two essay tests written during the term and two essays written in a final examination. Class attendance is required and will be recorded. A 1000-word paper on a topic chosen by the student is due by the last class.
Accommodations for students with disabilities: Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students office, which will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation.
Books: Plato, Republic Mill, On Liberty Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Tsenay Serequeberhan, ed., African Philosophy Jorge Luis Borges, Conversations
PHI 3930 Chinese Philosophy: Daoism - Dr. Liu
Main Objective. A detailed reading and interpretation of the two earliest and most important Taoist classics: Lao Tsu (or Tao-Te Ching) and Chuang Tsu (parts of).
Method. One of my primary objectives is to explain in English what is said literally in those texts. The nearly impossible task of translating them into English (which is intrinsic and has little to do with the translators’ lack of skills) makes my undertakings somewhat experimental.
Then, we shall work together to interpret those texts. The difficulty of translation does not imply that the interpretation and understanding are equally difficult. On the contrary, I believe that English is probably a better language for interpreting those texts, for it is a more exact and versatile language than modern Chinese.
Short essays will be assigned in the semester in which you will be asked to render your own interpretations of certain crucial passages.
Main Themes
(i) Cosmology and cosmogony: a naturalistic (non-religious) account of heaven
and earth and the generation of all things in between.
(ii) Metaphysics: the eternal nonbeing and the ever changing being.
(iii) Epistemology: true knowledge by intuition or divination, not by reason.
(iv) Natural philosophy: the relativity and exchangeability of all natural categories.
(v) Ethics: the nature of a sage and of wu wei.
(vi) Society and government: the pursuit for the idea of an ideal society.
PHI 3930 Philosophy of Race - Dr. Westmoreland
This is a Special Topics class on the History of the Race Concept. Students will first examine the formulation and use of race as a “scientific” concept in philosophical discourses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Second, they will investigate roles played by concepts of race in philosophies that focus on “lived experience” in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Figures to be studied include Voltaire, Kant, Darwin, Du Bois, Sartre, Fanon, and Alcoff.
PHI 3930 Philosophy of Ayn Rand - Mr. Claypool
The work of Ayn Rand has been quite influential outside of academic circles. While many have found her ideas insightful, others have found them barely worth considering. In this course, we will give central elements of her philosophy a close look, attempting to arrive at a fair and clear assessment of her arguments and positions. To do this, we will give Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand a careful review, reading at least the first half of it. We will also look at the work of other thinkers, to get their perspectives on topics covered by Rand and Peikoff. In particular, we will aim to understand Rand’s position on metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, reason, value, and (time permitting) virtue, as well as to understand and evaluate the arguments she advances for those positions, especially in light of what other thinkers have to say about those topics.
PHI 4220 Philosophy of Language - Dr. Ray
Philosophy of language examines the phenomenon of language and seeks to understand it in its relations to the world and to human thought and communication. Beginning with the most basic idea about language – that words are signs for things – and through study of a series of classic philosophical essays, this course will follow a major thread of the philosophical discourse focused on the semantics of language – reference, truth and meaning. Possible additional topics include: fictional discourse, vagueness, metaphor.
PHI 4320 Philosophy of Mind - Dr. Witmer
It is tempting to see the mind as occupying a special place in the world. Much of what we think of as especially valuable seems to depend on mentality – thought, feeling, reason, and the like. But is the mind in fact special? Much of what falls under the heading of the philosophy of mind can be understood as pursuing specific questions inspired by this general one: is the mind fundamentally different from the other things we find in the world? ‚Ä®This general question can be approached via what is known as the mind-body problem: the project of finding an account of the mind that locates it in the broader physical world. While this problem does not exhaust the philosophy of mind, one’s response to it imposes substantial constraints on what one may say about other questions in this area, and it will be our focus in this course.
The two dominant positions on the mind-body problem are materialism (also known as physicalism) and dualism. Very roughly put, materialism is the thesis that the mental reduces to—that is, in some sense is nothing more than—the physical, whereas dualism denies this, holding that there is something about mentality which includes something that is genuinely new and additional to the physical. We will consider both views generally as well as the two specific areas of the mental that seem especially distinctive of the mind, namely, the fact that we can represent things (intentionality) and the fact that there is something it is like to undergo experience (phenomenal consciousness).