Philosophy

Philosophical Problems This course serves as an introduction to some of the main issues in Western philosophy. Emphasis is placed on analytical thinking, speaking, and writing. Issues addressed include: external-world skepticism, the existence of God, determinism and free will, personal identity, the objectivity of morality, and the nature of science.

Introduction to Philosophy This course provides an introduction to the main problems and thinkers in the history of western philosophy. Students will thus be acquainted with such influential thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, and will read about and discuss such classic philosophical problems as the meaning of being, the existence of God, the nature of time, the relation of mind or soul to the body, the limitations of human knowledge, whether human beings have free will, and the meaning of life. There will be some emphasis upon developing the analytical and interpretive skills necessary for the proper understanding and evaluation of philosophical arguments and positions. No prerequisites.

Ethics In this class, we will examine foundational questions in ethics. We will discuss the objectivity of morality, the nature of well-being, and the rules that govern right conduct. Is there an objective fact about right and wrong, or is morality relative to persons or cultures? What is it to live a good life? What rules—if any—determine what is right or wrong? How should we make moral decisions? Three applications of ethical theory will help guide our discussion: our duties to the less fortunate, ethical vegetarianism, and the value of the environment. Grades will be assigned on the basis of papers, exams, and class participation. No prerequisites.

Philosophy of Religion This course focuses on doctrines common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: that there is one, powerful, just God who created the universe, who has revealed himself to his creatures, and who requires certain conduct of them. We explore various questions raised by these doctrines, including: Can God’s existence be reconciled with the existence of evil? Is there compelling evidence for God’s existence? Should the believer in God have evidence for the existence of God? Should the believer in God not have evidence for the existence of God? What is the connection between religion and morality? Religion and science? Do we, or could we, have any evidence for the existence of miracles? Is there an afterlife? Is an afterlife desirable?

Cultural Perspectives
Religions and Philosophies of East Asia: Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Shinto This course examines the historical roots and modern practice of the religious and philosophical traditions of China, Japan, and Korea. First we start in northeast India in the 6th century B.C., examining Vedic traditions and the historical development and diffusion of Buddhism. Before tracing the spread of Buddhism to East Asia, we study the development of Daoism, Confucianism, and Shinto, and the cultural traditions with which they coevolved. The next phase of the course focuses on the coexistence of these philosophies and religions, changes in their collective and individual roles within society, and their integration into the visual arts, music, literature, martial arts, daily life, and cultural landscapes. In the final phase of the course, we examine the roles that these belief systems play in contemporary East Asian and North American culture. Guest speakers discuss their own experiences and practices. Students are encouraged (but not expected) to observe or participate in activities at local Buddhist and Daoist communities. Students are also encouraged to relate their own experiences and practices to the course.

Cultural Perspectives
Daoism through Texts, Talks, and Taijiquan Daoism has had a major impact on Chinese intellectual and spiritual life for over two millennia. A philosophy that emphasizes individual development, immersion in nature, the rejection of societal convention, and the cultivation of natural virtue, it has been embraced by scholars, painters, poets, and political thinkers. A religion derived from classical philosophy, folk practices, Buddhism, and Yogic techniques, it perseveres in village rituals, global popular culture, and dissident sects like China’s Falungong. Taijiquan is a Daoist system of moving meditation and a martial art based on slowly flowing and subtly configured motions. Practiced worldwide, it is “the dance of Daoism,” providing insight and personal experience of Daoist principles found in major texts like the Dao De Jing, Zhuangzi, and Liezi. This course provides students with the opportunity to read classical texts on Daoism and Taijiquan and to study the Thirteen Postures, a Yang style form of Taijiquan. We also read Daoist nature poetry, Tang dynasty Daoist short stories, and an account of the life of Guan Saihong, a Daoist master (and if possible, we will have Guan visit the class). Our practice of Taijiquan and work on textual interpretation is supplemented with free-ranging discussions (talks) on Daoism in the spirit of the School of Pure Conversation, a Daoist group of the first millennium that emphasized free expression and a sharpening of the imagination. Prerequisites: PHIL 203, PHIL 206, PHIL 208, or permission of the instructor.

Cultural Perspectives
Buddhism: History, Teachings and Practices This course will examine Buddhist experience and expression in its diversity and regional variation encompassing forms found in South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. This is in an interdisciplinary study that uses a combination of primary Buddhist texts in translation and selections from the secondary literature on Buddhism, film, and other media. We will trace the major threads of Buddhist thought, practices, and history while paying special attention to the ways in which this Indian religion adapted to a wide range of cultures in Asia and now in the West.

Formal Logic Formal logic, also known as symbolic logic, involves the formalization of the logical rules implicit in human reasoning. Its goal is to determine which forms of argument must produce true conclusions when applied to true premises. Studying formal logic is a good way to become familiar with the logical structure of sentences and arguments in natural languages. This in turn is useful in many contexts. We will study the translation of sentences from natural languages into formal languages and vice versa; the truth-functional operators (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’), the conditional (‘if…then…’), and the biconditional (‘if and only if’); propositional logic, which evaluates arguments containing the truth-functional operators; predicate logic, which adds to propositional logic rules concerning the quantifiers ‘all’ and ‘some’; proofs of the consistency and completeness of propositional and predicate logic; and modal logic (the logic of possibility and necessity). Grades will be assigned on the basis of exams, quizzes, and homework assignments. Background in logic or mathematics is helpful but not required.

Ancient Greek Philosophy This course will explore the central doctrines and arguments of the three most important figures in ancient Greek philosophy: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates appears not to have left any writings. So we shall begin by reading Plato’s Socratic dialogues and consider the problems associated with recovering the historical Socrates from these and other ancient sources. We shall then turn our attention to Plato’s own distinctive doctrines, focusing upon his theory of the soul, his theory of forms, his cosmology, and his ethics. Problems to be discussed include the relative chronology of Plato’s dialogues and the criticism and revision of the theory of forms apparent in some of Plato’s late dialogues. We shall also consider the possibility of recovering Plato’s so-called Unwritten Doctrine. Our study of Aristotle will involve the detailed examination of several texts central to his physics and metaphysics. We shall focus first upon his criticism of Plato’s theory of forms, as well as his criticism of Presocratic philosophers, in response to which he developed several of his own characteristic doctrines. These include his theory of the categories of being and the primacy of substance, his analyses of change in nature and the doctrine of the four causes, the nature of time, space, and the infinite, and his theory of the soul in relation to body and intellect. Students will also have to the chance to read about and engage in some contemporary debates concerning the interpretation of Plato and Aristotle. Prerequisites: One course in Social Studies or permission of the instructor.

Doubt & Dogmatism: Faith & Rational Inquiry in Greece & Rome Histories of philosophy often leave the impression that philosophy in Western antiquity ended with Plato and Aristotle. But in the Mediterranean world after Alexander the Great and down to the ultimate victory of Christianity, the intellectual landscape was dominated by a very different group of philosophies: Stoicism, founded by Semitic thinkers and focused on a belief in fate and duty; Epicureanism, a seemingly atheistic belief in science and pleasure; and the Skepticism of Plato’s Academy. They argued over the issues which guided people’s lives. How do we achieve happiness? What are the greatest good and the greatest evil? What role do the gods play? How do we live in harmony with nature? Are women equal to men? And what about slavery? What happens to me after death? In answering these questions, these schools established the concepts and arguments which defined the intellectual world of late antiquity and Western Europe well into the modern period. We will engage with these questions and arguments in this formative phase, in which science, philosophy, and religion were not distinguished as they are today. Whereas for Plato and Aristotle we possess their own works, almost all that we have of these philosophers has been handed down to us by others: later adherents, Greek historians of philosophy (Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius), and often by Christian authors seeking to refute pagan ways of thinking. We must reconstruct the original source in order to critique it. Students will be encouraged and expected to argue with these thinkers, in class and in papers. No prerequisites.

Existentialism This course will explore the main principles of Existentialism. The social and intellectual context of Existentialism will be discussed, as will the impact of Existentialism on subsequent movements. Fundamental philosophical concepts to be discussed in the course include human existence, human nature, the meaning and ethics of human action, and the necessity and the limits of knowledge and of faith. Readings will be drawn from the works of Camus, De Beauvoir, Heidegger, Jaspers, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre.

Islamic Philosophy This course provides an introduction to the study of Islamic philosophy, by examining the distinctive problems, doctrines, and arguments that characterize Islamic philosophy in its classical period (c. 800-1200 C.E.) Students will thus become familiar with the teachings of Alfarabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Suhrawardi, al-Ghazali, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Among the topics to be covered in the course are the attempts by some philosophers to reconcile Greek philosophical and scientific learning with Islam, the distinction—and conflict—between philosophy and theology in Islam, the role of reason in Islamic conceptions of human well-being, and the peculiarly Islamic philosophical treatments of such classic problems in metaphysics as the nature of the soul and its relation to the body, the eternity of the world, and the nature of causality. While some attention will be paid to the influence of Islamic philosophy upon the course of later Western philosophy, the focus will remain upon Islamic philosophy as its own distinctive tradition. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or above.

Biomedical Ethics Some of the most contentious debates in public morality today arise in the context of the practice of medicine and medical research. Many of these debates are the result of continuously advancing medical technologies that challenge our conception of what it is to be a human being and force us to consider the relation between our conceptions of ourselves as biological beings and as moral beings. We shall thus study the ethics of cloning, genetic engineering, stem cell research, and various reproductive technologies and strategies, including abortion, IVF, and surrogate motherhood. In addition, because they are faced with life and death decisions on an almost daily basis, healthcare professionals are frequently faced with moral dilemmas that have an urgency rarely found in other areas of human activity. It is with this urgency in mind that we shall examine the ethical guidelines that might be established for such end-of-life decisions as advanced directives, DNR orders, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide. Finally, because the accessibility and delivery of healthcare is increasingly associated with current notions of justice, we shall examine the ethical issues surrounding the distribution of resources and managed care, as well as associated issues involving the physician-patient relationship. The course will consider the differences in how these various issues are approached from competing ethical perspectives, including consequentialism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics, and special attention will be paid to whether and how the principle of double effect may be invoked to resolve some of these moral dilemmas. Prerequisite: One course in social studies or one course in biology.

Metaphysics Metaphysics considers the fundamental questions about the nature and meaning of being, time, and change. It begins by examining the different ways in which different things can be said to be. Thus, for instance, living substances, time, numbers, and fictional characters all may be said to exist in some way but their manner of existence is in each case different. In addition to such problems concerning the different modes of being, this course will be particularly interested in examining the nature of time, problems involving identity and persistence through time, and the possibility of the subjective origin of time. We shall also examine in some detail the metaphysical structure of material substances, by analyzing our concepts of matter, body, properties, and form. In addition, the course will investigate numerous problems involving how we think about causality and causal relations among material substances. Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing, one course in philosophy, or permission of the instructor.

Metaphysics, Minds, and Morals: Hume and Kant Immanuel Kant is the most influential philosopher of the last 250 years. Much of the subsequent history of philosophy is either a reaction to or development of Kant. His critical philosophy introduced limits upon what human beings can know, while at the same time determining precisely what it is that the human mind itself contributes to its experience of the world. With Kant, the human mind is no longer considered a mere passive observer, but is instead understood to be an active participant in the world that it structures. Among the surprising positions that Kant argues for in his metaphysical works is the ideality or the subjective origin of space, time, and causality. His moral philosophy seeks to establish analogously a principle of morality that is at once subjective in origin yet objectively valid. While Kant must be considered a revolutionary thinker in the history of modern philosophy, his work must itself be understood largely as a response to the skepticism of David Hume. Like Kant, Hume was interested in placing strict limits upon what it is that human beings can claim to know. However, the skeptical arguments by which he achieves these limits, especially his attacks on the notion of causality and the inductive method, have the effect of apparently undermining the knowledge claims of physicists just as much as of the metaphysicians. We shall be interested in evaluating his arguments and determining how much of either science Kant is able to recover. Finally, we shall examine Hume’s emotivist anti-rationalism in ethics as a sharp contrast to the rationalism of Kant’s ethics. The course will involve the close reading of several seminal works in the history of philosophy, and there will be some emphasis especially on acquiring a precise understanding of Kant’s positions and arguments. While we shall always remain sensitive to the historical context of when these works were written, the class will consider the problems that were of concern to Hume and Kant as if engaging contemporary philosophers in dialogue over these issues. Prerequisites: Sophomore standing, one course in philosophy or political science, and a willingness to read diligently and engage thoughtfully with challenging philosophical works.

Philosophy Tutorial Under these course numbers, juniors and seniors design tutorials to meet their particular interests and programmatic needs. A student should see the prospective tutor to definan area of mutual interest to pursue either individually or in a small group. A student may register for no more than one tutorial in any semester.