Course Offerings (Spring 2024)

Philosophy Courses

Note that courses marked with * contribute to satisfying general education requirements.

*PHIL 1000: Introduction to Philosophy

Note that credit will not be given for both this course and PHIL 1001, which is the honors version of this course.

Section 1: TTH 9:00 - 10:20, Blakely 

Major works on such themes as appearance and reality, human nature, nature of knowledge, relation of mind and body, right and good, existence of God, and freedom and determinism.

Section 2: TTH 10:30 - 11:50, Blakely

Major works on such themes as appearance and reality, human nature, nature of knowledge, relation of mind and body, right and good, existence of God, and freedom and determinism.

Section 3: TTH 3:00 - 4:20, Ardoline

Major works on such themes as appearance and reality, human nature, nature of knowledge, relation of mind and body, right and good, existence of God, and freedom and determinism.

Section 4: MWF 10:30 - 11:20, Wells

This course provides an introduction to philosophy through a survey of a number of figures and themes in Western philosophy. We will especially consider the relationships between and themes in Western philosophy. We will especially consider the relationships between belief, understanding, reason, and self. Along the way we will ask, for example: What do I believe, what should I believe, and on what grounds? Can the use of reason lead to social and historical progress? Are there boundaries and limits to what we can know? What is the self? If we are free, then are there justifiablle limits that can be placed on one's choices and actions by others? Why is democracy something of value to us? What ought our relationship to the natural world be? Figures we will discuss include (but are not limited to): Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Mill.

Section 5: MWF 11:30 - 12:20, Wells

This course provides an introduction to philosophy through a survey of a number of figures and themes in Western philosophy. We will especially consider the relationships between belief, understanding, reason, and self. Along the way we will ask, for example: What do I believe, what should I believe, and on what grounds? Can the use of reason lead to social and historical progress? Are there boundaries and limits to what we can know? What is the self? If we are free, then are there justifiable limits that can be placed on one's choices and actions by others? Why is democracy something of value to us? What ought our relationship to the normal world be? Figures we will discuss include (but are not limited to): Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Mill.

Section 6: MWF 12:30 - 1:20, E. Cogburn

We will study key classic and contemporary texts in the Western Philosophical tradition using science fiction short stories, television shows, and movies as thought experiments to help us to work out the issues raised in the philosophy. Issues covered should include: the problem of the external world, free will or lack there of, the existence of God, the nature of knowledge, and time travel.


*PHIL 1021: Introduction to Logic

No special background presupposed.

Section 1: TTH 12:00 - 1:20, Ardoline

Formal and informal reasoning; introduction to propositional logic; formal and informal fallacies; scientific reasoning.


*PHIL 2020: Ethics

Note that credit will not be given for both this course and PHIL 2050, which is the honors version of this course.

Section 1: TTH 10:30 - 11:50, Kelley

What am  I morally obligated to do? What should I care about and pursue for its own sake? This course introduces students to the philosophical study of ethics by investigating these fundamental and perplexing questions of human existence. The course is divided into three parts. First, we'll investigate the normative ethics of behavior by asking questions such as whether the rightness or wrongness of an action depends solely on consequences or whether the intentions of the person performing the action also matter. Second, we'll focus on well-being and ask what kind of life would be best for you to lead. The third part of the course examines controversial topics such as immigration, affirmative action, and abortion. More generally, the course is designed to help the student become a better thinker and writer, especially as it relates to the utilization of ethical concepts, terms, and reasoning.

Section 2: TTH 12:00 - 1:20, Kelley

What am I morally obligated to do? What should I care about and pursue for its own sake? This course introduces students to the philosophical study of ethics by investigating these fundamental and perplexing questions of human existence. The course is divided into three parts. First, we'll investigate the normative ethics of behavior by asking questions such as whether the rightness or wrongness of an action depends solely on its consequences or whether the intentions of the person performing the action depends solely on its consequences or whether the intentions of the person performing the action also matter. Second, we'll focus on well-being and ask what kind of life would be the best for you to lead. The third part of the course examines controversial topics such as immigration, affirmative action, and abortion. More generally, the course is designed to help the student become a better thinker and writer, especially as it relates to the utilization of ethical concepts, terms, and reasoning.

Section 3: TTH 1:30 - 2:50, Blakley

Classical and recent theories of obligation and value, including works of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, and Nietzsche; topics including freedom, rights, justification of moral judgements.

Section 4: TTH 3:00 - 4:20, Blakley

Classical and recent theories of obligation and value, including works of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume and Nietzsche; topics including freedom, rights, justification of moral judgements.

Section 5: MWF 2:30 - 3:20, Wells

In this course we examine major positions in the history of ethical theory, as well as their applications and challenges to them. In the most basic sense, this course asks: What is right? How ought we act? How ought we live? In considering these primary questions, we will ask further: How ought we treat, and what do we owe, each other? Where do these obligations and responsibilities come from, i.e., what are their foundations? Our aim will be not only to understand these questions in theory, but to grapple with how they challenge us to live our lives, give us meaning, and determine what we value. Our task is to consider who we are and who we want to (or, perhaps who we ought  to become). In pursuing this task, we will consider virtue ethics, stoic ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and care ethics. We will also consider critiques of morality.

Section 6: MWF 3:30 - 4:20, Wells

In this course we examine major positions in the history of ethical theory, as well as their applications and challenges to them. In the most basic sense, this course asks: What is right? How ought we act? How ought we live? In considering these primary questions, we will ask further: How ought we treat, and what do we owe, each other? Where do these obligations and responsibilities come from, i.e., what are their foundations? Our aim will be not only to understand these questions in theory, but to grapple with how they challenge us to live our lives, give us meaning, and determine what we value. Our task is to consider who we are and who we want to (or, perhaps who we ought to) become. In pursuing this task, we will consider virtue ethics, stoic ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and care ethics. We will also consider critiques of morality.


PHIL 2024: Philosophy in Literature

Section 1: TTH 10:30 - 11:50, Nathan

In this course, we will study women's selfhood and agency in relation to race, disabiliity, and trauma. We will do so by discussing classic and contemporary works of literature such as Euripides' Medea, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Morrison's Beloved, in conjunction with key feminist texts. We will cover feminist philosophy by Simone de Beauvoir, Kimberle' Crenshaw, Judith Butler, and bell hooks, among others. Here are some of the questions we will explore in the course: In what ways is a woman limited in her ability to exercise agency? How is her person hood affected by disability? In what ways does trauma, oppression, and slavery affect or transform a woman's self?


PHIL 2025: Bioethics

Section 1: TTH 10:30 - 11:50, Bacon

Bioethics is the examination of the ethical issues of having/ being a biological body, the ethics of medicine, public health, life sciences, and ethical issues of biological life. The study of medical/biological ethics may seem relevant only to those pursuing medical professions, but we are all living, biological, embodied. beings. We live in a society and in ethical relation to others who are also living, biological, embodied, beings and so we all must make bioethical decisions individually and collectively in terms of how we care for and treat others. This course will give you an overview of bioethics, paying special attention to reproductive issues, care ethics, disability ethics, philosophy of illness, and ethical issues of end of life, death, and dying. We will also consider the ethical implications of theoretical medical advances such as cloning humans or unnaturally extending human life. By the end of the course, students will be able to apply various ethical frameworks to bioethical issues and discuss, think through, debate, and respond to bioethical issues with nuance, respect, and complexity.


PHIL 2028/ REL 2028: Philosophy of Religion

Section 1: MW 4:30 - 5:50, Felty

This course will be a philosophical introduction to some of the integral questions about the nature of religion. What are the essential attributes of the divine? What is the role of philosophical/ rational inquiry when it comes to religious belief? Are there any good reasons to believe that God exists? Does the existence of evil undermine belief in God's existence? What is a miracle and what would be a means of knowing that one occurred? What is the relevance of the existence of God to moral values and duties? We will primarily focus on the way in which Western philosophers (both classical and contemporary) think about these questions.


PHIL 2035: History of Modern Philosophy

Section 1: TTH 6:00 - 7:20, Ardoline

This course is a survey of Early Modern European philosophy (roughly, 1580 - 1800 A.D.). The modern period is a time of great intellectual, social, and political upheaval that, or at least believed it had, rejected the authority of ancient wisdom and that birthed ideas and institutions on which contemporary science and society still stand. Modern thinkers undertook an intellectual revolution by changing the fundamental question of philosophy from "what is the nature of existence?" to "what can I know?". We will pay particular attention to this question, and we will see how it helped make modern science possible as well as how it led to radical new ideas in metaphysics, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. We will read major figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Newton, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant as well as their critics and less appreciated but no less appreciated but no less fascinating and innovative contemporaries such as Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Emilie du Chatelet, and Anton Wilhelm Amo. Required Text: Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources, 3rd Edition, eds. Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins, Hackett, 2019. (Must be 3rd edition; previous editions will not have all the readings needed for the course).


PHIL 3020: Special Topics: Paranormal Epistemology 

Section 1: MWF 2:30 - 3:20, E. Cogburn

This course will cover the major classical topics of epistemology, examining the nature of knowledge and justification, essentially what can we know and how can we know it. In doing so, we will explore what counts as evidence for the paranormal and our ability (or not) to know about paranormal phenomena.


PHIL 4786: Selected Topics: Deleuze and Guattari on State and Non-State Social Formations

Section 1: MW 4:30 - 5:50, Protevi

Although we will talk of the full works, we will focus on Part 3 of Anti-Oedipus and the following chapters of A thousand Plateaus: 1, 4 - 6, 9, 12 - 13. We will concentrate on the relation of state and non-state social forms using the concepts of capture and flight (marronage).


PHIL 4941: Philosophy of Mind

May be taken for a max. of 6 sem. hrs. when  topics vary.

Section 1: MWF 3:30 - 4:20, J. Cogburn

We will start by going through Paul Churchland's classic Matter and Consciousness to get a brief overview of the history of analytic philosophy of mind up until the 1990s, then we will turn to the new Oxford University Press Feminist Philosophy of Mind anthology edited by Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny. The book is divided into five sections: (1) Mind and Gender and Race, (2) Self and Selves, (3) Naturalism and Normativity, (4) Body and Mind, and (5) Memory and Emotion. Students will come out of the class able to read and contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind.


PHIL 4943: Problems in Ethical Theory

Prereq: two courses in philosophy or consent of the instructor. May be taken for a max. of 6 sem. hrs. of credit when topics vary.

Section 1: TTH 9:00 - 10:20, Kelley

This course examines a cluster of issues concerning the ethical significance of various emerging technologies. Can an artificially intelligen system be benefitted or harmed? how have various new technologies transformed what it means to live a good life? What are the ethical dangers of  certain technologies (e.g., social media, large language models, enhanced surveillance)? What are their benefits? Main texts will be selected from Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, ed. S. Matthew Liao and other contemporary sources.


PHIL 4945: Problems in Political Philosophy 

Section 1: TTH 1:30 - 2:50, Bacon

What follows are the guiding questions of this course. Ought a government or political entity be ethical? This question and the adjacent questions such as: Should a political state be just? What do we mean by justice in a legal context, and what do we mean when we invoke the phrase "social justice"? What is the aim of governance, of politics, of society? Are these aims the same or are they at cross-purposes at times? What is the equality or equity and is it attainable? What do we owe the injured, aggrieved, or the oppressed when governance is unjust? How should we respond to unethical actions of governance? What are one's political responsibilities in terms of te welfare of others? is a free society a just society? How do we enact a just society? Can a society of economic inequality be considered just?


PHIL 4949: Topics in Philosophy of Gender: Foucault's History of Sexuality

Bound with WGS 7500

Section 1: W 3:00 - 5:50, Goldgaber

This course takes as its point of departure the first volume of French philosopher Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality (along with two recently published lectures). We will consider his critiques of the science of sex of his day and his analyses of how this scientific knowledge informed the political and social institutions of his day. Following George Canguilhem and more recently Arnold Davidson, we will try to understand Foucault's project as articulating a novel "historical epistemology" with important consequences not only for our understanding of ab/normality and sexuality, but also scientific knowledge and concept more generally.


PHIL 4952: Topics in Metaphysics

May be taken for a max. of 6 sem. hrs. of credit when topics vary.

Section 1: MW 6:00 - 7:20, Ardoline

Topics include ontology, modalities, universals, truth, causation, reductionism, identity (physical and personal), realism, and the meaning of life.


PHIL 7905: Graduate Seminar in History of Philosophy

May be taken for a max. of 6 sem. hrs. of credit when topics vary.

Section 1: T 3:00 - 5:50, Nathan

Study of a major philosopher or school of philosophy.