| PHI 111 - Basic
Problems of Philosophy
Multiple sections; for information
on individual sections, click
here
FYS 100 - Mad Minds, Broken Minds
George Graham - (TR- 09:30 – 10:45 a.m. - Tribble A207)
Description and Goals:
Most of us live our lives against a background of normalcy.
We may feel sad, but never become clinically depressed. We may
get anxious, but never experience complete distortion of our
personalities. We may forget things, but never suffer from dramatic
deficits in autobiographical memory. We may have difficulty
relating intimately with other people, but never fall into utter
social isolation.
Not everyone’s mind is up
to the job. Some minds are broken, some from birth, others in
the course of development or in response to lesion, trauma or
crisis. Historically, broken minds have sometimes been referred
to as mad minds – as forms of madness or insanity. Partly
because of recent successes in the study of how the brain performs
but also can deform mental activity, talk of madness has been
replaced by talk of broken or disordered minds.
This is a seminar about ‘mad’
or broken minds. It is about four types of broken minds in particular:
the minds of victims of autism, Alzheimer’s disease, clinical
depression, and borderline personality disorder. The seminar
is premised on the following assumption. We can learn from broken
minds about healthy, unbroken minds. We can discover facts about
how healthy, normal, or well-functioning minds are put together
by examining what happens to the human mind when it comes apart.
Inferring lessons about healthy
minds from damaged or broken minds is challenging. However it
is a common strategy in a number of areas of philosophical and
psychological research. We shall pursue the strategy. In the
course of discussion a number of topics will be discussed. These
will include (among others): the problem of other minds, the
nature of personal autonomy and identity, the positive role
of negative emotions in human happiness, and the nature and
power of irrationality.
The goals of the course are threefold.
* To reveal how the study of mental
illness can contribute to understanding healthy or normal human
mental functioning.
* To encourage students to enter
compassionately and intelligently into the lives of mentally
ill persons.
* To expose students to central
questions about the nature and character of the human mind.
Required Readings:
* Temple Grandin (with M. M. Scariano),
Emergence: Labelled Autistic. Warner, pb,
1996, ISBN 0446671827
*Simon Baron-Cohen, Mindblindness:
Autism and Theory of Mind. MIT, pb, 1997, ISBN 026252225X
* Thomas De Baggio, Losing My Mind:
An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer’s. Touchstone,
pb, 2003, ISBN 0743205669
* Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.
Vintage Books, pb, 1994, ISBN 0679746048
* William Styron, Darkness
Visible: A Memoir of Madness. Vintage, pb. 1992, ISBN 0679736395
FYS 100 - What’s a Person to Do: Ethics and Film
Hannah Hardgrave - (MW – 03:00 p.m. – 04:15 p.m.
- Tribble A307)
The question, “How
ought I to live?” is one that most people face at some
time in their lives; it is also a question faced by characters
in many films. In this seminar basic issues in philosophical
ethics concerning the nature of morality, the right, and the
good will be applied to the situations depicted in selected
films. Among the questions to be addressed are: Is morality
subjective? Is happiness always the (only) Good? Is the violation
of a moral duty ever justified? What is the basis of morality
– reason or faith or emotion or something else? Class
discussion of the ethical ideas and their application will form
the core of the course; the goal of the course is to give students
extensive practice in moral reasoning.
FYS 100 - Philosophy of War
Clark Thompson - (TR – 03:00 p.m. – 04:15 p.m. -
Tribble A201)
A study of the implications
of moral theory for the determination of when war is morally
permissible and of how war is to be conducted if it is to be
waged in a morally acceptable way. We shall examine whether
either just war theory or utilitarianism can offer acceptable
guidance in making these determinations. We shall ask whether
the provisions of international law governing warfare, as well
as the rules conducting warfare adopted by the military forces
of the United States, are morally acceptable, and whether various
possible military actions (e.g., the bombing of cities to weaken
civilian morale) violate such provisions and rules.
PHI 121 –Logic
Marcus Hester - (TR – 09:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. –
Tribble Hall A307)
This course on elementary logic
is oriented to students with other interests in addition to
interest in pure philosophy, for example, to students intending
to go to law, business or medical school. Thus it emphasizes
translating and formulating arguments in ordinary English instead
of a hybrid language of English and logic. However, philosophical
and theoretical issues are discussed--for example the nature
of causation and contrary to-fact-conditionals (conditionals
such as "Stonewall Jackson would not have been a great
general if Lee had not been commanding general of the Confederate
Army"). Further, arguments intended to establish their
conclusion with probability are studied as well as arguments
intended to establish an airtight link between premises and
conclusion.
PHI 252 – Contemporary Philosophy
Dorothea Lotter - (MWF– 10:00 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. –
Tribble Hall A307)
This course is aimed primarily
at students who have previously completed a Philosophy 111 course
and now are curious to learn a little more about how philosophy
is professionally done at a slightly higher level. Previous
acquaintance with at least some basic notions of modern logic
and/or critical thinking will be of help. The course provides
an introduction to contemporary philosophy in the so-called
“analytic” tradition, which means that we will try
to logically analyze and evaluate arguments from classical texts
of the 20th century. Also, any attempts at developing new or
alternative views and arguments will be encouraged both in class
and in written assignments.
The selected texts will introduce you to various fields of
contemporary philosophical thought and inquiry, such as philosophy
of language, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind,
ethics and general methodology. We will be reading texts by
Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
P.F. Strawson, W.V. Quine, Edmund Gettier, Nelson Goodman, D.M.
Armstrong, Thomas Nagel, David Lewis, Bernard Williams, among
others. Grading is based on: (1) participation, including occasional
short oral presentations of part of a text, (2) two essays (5-7
pages), (3) a final take-home exam. Extra credit can be earned
for submitting short written responses to special study questions
handed out each week.
All of our primary texts are contained in David Sosa, Aloysius
Martinich (eds.): Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology,
Blackwell 2001. As a secondary source I also recommend Kwame
Anthony Appiah: Thinking It Through. An Introduction to
Contemporary Philosophy, OUP 2003. Both books will be available
at the book store.
PHI 253 – Main Streams/Chinese Philosophy &
Religion
Patrick Moran - (MWF– 03:00 p.m. – 03:50 p.m. –
Carswell 14)
An introduction to the most important
traditions in Chinese philosophy and religion: Confucianism,
Daoism (Taoism), and Chinese Buddhism or Chinese Chan (Zen)
Buddhism.
PHI 262 – Philosophy of Law
Win-chiat Lee – (TR – 01:30 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.
– Tribble Hall A307)
What is law? Does law have to
be just or reasonable in order to be binding? Can we interpret
the law without exercising moral judgment? These are some of
the more general questions regarding the nature of law and legal
reasoning that will be discussed in the first part of the course.
In the second part of the course, we will explore the moral
limits of criminal law and discuss some of the philosophical
issues regarding individual liberty in American Constitutional
Law--issues such as the legislation of morals, freedom of expression,
and legal paternalism. In the third and final part of the course,
we will deal with the extent of responsibility and liability
in tort and criminal law, including the problem of the insanity
defense. The overall topic is the relation of law to morality.
PHI 341 – Kant
Adrian Bardon – (TR – 12:00 p.m. – 01:15 p.m.
Tribble Hall A307)
In this course we shall
study Kant’s critical discussion of claims to philosophical,
scientific, religious, and moral knowledge in his Critique of
Pure Reason and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In
these works Kant mediates between rationalist and empiricist
approaches to knowledge; thanks to his brilliant and innovative
approach, these works are widely considered to be among the
most important and influential philosophical texts ever written.
Students will write a number of short essays and a longer term
paper.
PHI 372 – Philosophy of Religion
Charles Lewis – (TR – 03:00 p.m - 04:15 p.m. –
Tribble Hall A307)
Are the gods dead? Is
God? What is the nature and significance of religious experience
and what causes it? Is it a symptom of some underlying human
malady or need? Or is it, in fact, engendered by something nonhuman,
such as God or gods? Is there any knowledge of God, whether
via proofs or revelation, or must believers rely on something
less than knowledge? How are religious claims like or unlike
moral or metaphysical claims? How are they like or unlike modern
scientific claims (e.g., about unseen things such as particles)?
PHI 381 – Topics in Epistemology
Dorothea Lotter – (MW – 03:00 p.m. – 04:15
p.m. - Tribble Hall B313)
Epistemology is the
philosophical inquiry into the nature, conditions and extent
of human knowledge. As such, it seeks to provide a comprehensive
answer to three basic questions: (1) What is knowledge? (2)
How we can know anything about the world? (3) What are the limits
of our knowledge? Epistemology therefore is one of, or maybe
the most essential and fundamental disciplines of philosophy
itself, if we want to assume that there is something like a
reliable method of gaining specifically philosophical knowledge
or insights. Epistemology comprises the very tasks of justifying
philosophical inquiry itself and of defining its nature.
Historically, probably the major
driving force of epistemological inquiry has been Skepticism,
which can be regarded either as a method or a view (or attitude).
As a view, Skepticism denies that we can acquire genuine knowledge
about things (ultimately including even whether we can know
anything about them), and thereby gives a radically pessimistic
answer to the second and third question above as they were traditionally
posed. As a method, most prominently used by Descartes in his
Meditations, it employs skeptical doubt systematically in order
to finally overcome it by finding a reliable foundation of knowledge
that resists the skeptical challenge. In similar ways, Skepticism
has motivated numerous later philosophers to find a route out
of (or around) it.
This course will be focusing on
the following basic questions: (a) What does Skepticism really
mean, or in other words: What is the difference between philosophical
and scientific or everyday questions about human knowledge?
(b) Does Skepticism -- understood as an answer to a specifically
philosophical question -- make sense at all? (c) What, if anything,
does philosophical skepticism imply about the knowledge we possess
in science and everyday life? (d) How, if at all, could Skepticism
be refuted? An important issue will be the question of whether
a so-called “naturalized epistemology” could be
regarded as serious answer to the skeptical challenge, or as
serious philosophical treatment of knowledge in general. In
assessing these and other questions resulting from them -- including
questions about the very concept of knowledge itself and its
conditions -- we will turn to both classical (Descartes, Kant,
Moore) and contemporary readings (e.g., Ayer, Quine, Chisholm,
Stroud, Lehrer, Kim, DeRose, and others).
Textbooks (Additional readings
may be available at the library, the bookstore, or distributed
in class):
Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism,
Clarendon Press, 1984; Keith Derose/ Ted A. Warfield (eds.),
Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader, Oxford University
Press, 1998; and Sven Bernecker/Fred I. Dretske (eds.), Knowledge:
Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, Oxford University
Press 2000
PHI 382 – Topics in Metaphysics
Ralph Kennedy – (MWF – 11:00 a.m. – 11:50
a.m. - Tribble Hall A307)
Metaphysics as a branch
of philosophy has nothing to do with "New Age" spirituality,
the occult, mysticism, astral bodies, or any of the other topics
one might find represented in the Metaphysics section of certain
bookstores.
What is metaphysics, then? The
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as "the
philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and
structure of reality. It is broader in scope than science, e.g.,
physics and even cosmology…, since one of its traditional
concerns is the existence of non-physical entities, e.g., God.
It is also more fundamental, since it investigates questions
science does not address but the answers to which it presupposes.
Are there, for instance, physical objects at all, and does every
event have a cause?"
In keeping with this definition,
we will focus first on themes concerning some very general features
of reality, such as: the nature of time and temporal passage,
analogies between space and time, the persistence of objects
through changes that befall them, and the nature of causality.
Then we'll turn to the less general topic of how we fit into
the world. Are we physical objects, and if so, of what sort?
If not, what else could we be? Is freedom of action a genuine
possibility or merely an illusion? How does consciousness fit
into the scientific world-picture? Another important metaphysical
question is whether there is a world (i.e., a unique one) at
all, or whether it would be better to adopt a kind of relativism
according to which "what there is" is relative to
the "conceptual scheme" of the person thinking about
the question. And no metaphysics course would be complete that
did not turn its attention at some point to the fascinating
question, "Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?"
Given the sweep of metaphysics,
it is to be expected that there should be controversy over whether
such a discipline is genuinely possible. Accordingly, we will
end the course by considering various influential arguments
against the possibility of metaphysics as a legitimate intellectual
enterprise.
Readings for the course will be
from the following two books: Metaphysics: The Big Questions,
edited by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman; and Metaphysics
(2nd edition), by Peter van Inwagen. The first of these is an
anthology and the second a textbook.
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