Philosophy Course Descriptions
Spring 2015
PHI 1306. H1Introduction to Logic
Buras105MWF 9:05-955
We study logic for the same reason we study grammar. The aim in both cases is to do better at something all do all the time. In the case of Logic the aim is to do better at reasoning. Reasoning is an inevitable part of every area of ordinary life, and every field of academic inquiry. When we reason, we attempt to track some very important relationships between truths. The goal of reasoning is to see whether one (or more) truths entails another or makes another more likely. Logic is the study of these very important relationships between truths. In this class we will study the most important ways philosophers have devised for systematically tracking these relationships between truths. We will also learn to evaluate reasoning in ordinary life and in academic study with the aid of these systems of logic. As an honors section, this course will be especially writing intensive.
PHI1306.01Introduction to Logic
Cartagena110MWF 10:10-11:00
Logic is the study of reasoning and argumentation. Studying logic can help you evaluate competing claims, both in academic contexts and in everyday life. This course will help you to think critically and coherently by learning and applying logical tools, principles, and methods. Throughout the semester,we’ll use logic to inform our readings of both popular and philosophical texts (e.g.New York Timescolumns and Plato’sEuthyphro) and in writing both editorial (“op-ed”) and philosophical essays.
PHI1306.02Introduction to Logic
Dahm106MWF11:15-12:05
Studying logic helps us to think more clearly, which helps us do all sorts of things: writing a paper, making plans, discussing a movie, evaluating a political debate, or trying to figure out whether God exists. In this class, you will learn to understand, evaluate and construct arguments. We will examine the things that go into making an argument – terms and propositions – and the structure of good and bad arguments. To do all of this, we will look at a lot of arguments. Some of them will be famous arguments, like those for and against the existence of God. Some of them will be arguments about politics and ethics, like those concerning moral relativism. And some of them will be arguments about pop culture, like those articulating Nicolas Cage’s genius. Through practice, you will improve your ability to recognize, examine, and communicate arguments in every area of life.
PHI1306.03Introduction to Logic
McAllister106MWF 1:25-2:15
There’s good reasoning and there’s bad reasoning. In this course, we’ll learn how to discern the good from the bad. By the end you’ll know multiple logical systems that will help you recognize and avoid errors in reasoning. This feature of logic—protection from error—is part of what makes logic such a valuable tool. Starting with true premises, anything that can be inferred from those premises through logically valid reasoning will also be true. Thus, formal systems of logic, when combined with other critical thinking kills, form a powerful tool designed to help inquiring minds discover truth. The skills learned in this course will, quite simply, make you a better thinker. This class is recommended to anyone who cares about reasoning well (be it in matters of ethics, religion, law, relationships, business, politics, healthcare, etc.) and discovering truth.
PHI 1306.04Introduction to Logic
Aho106MWF 2:30-3:20
Logic is the study of reasoning and argumentation. Studying logic can help you evaluate competing claims, both in academic contexts and in everyday life. This course will help you to think critically and coherently by learning and applying logical tools, principles, and methods. Throughout the semester, we’ll use logic to inform our readings of both popular and philosophical texts (e.g. New York Times columns and Plato’s Euthyphro) and in writing both editorial (“op-ed”) and philosophical essays.
PHI 1306.05Introduction to Logic
Thornton110TR 9:30-10:45
Somewaysofreasoning aregood.Here’sanexample:“Ifit’ssnowing tonight,they’llcanceltheparty.It’ssnowing tonight. So they’llcanceltheparty.” Somewaysof reasoningarebad.Here’sanexample:“IfTomisaturkey,thenhe’sabird.Tomisabird.SoTomisaTurkey.”That’s badreasoningbecauseevenifthefirsttwosentencesaretrue,theconclusioncanbe false. Afterall,maybe Tomis a penguinor a parrot.
Logicistheartofreasoningwell.Bystudyinglogic,youwilllearnwhatmakessomereasoninggoodandsomereasoning bad,howtospotcasesofreasoning poorly,andhowto avoidreasoningpoorlyyourself.Youwillpracticeandstrengthentheskillsofthinkingclearlyanddeeply,organizingyourthoughts,articulatingyourviews,andgivingreasonsforyourpositions—skillsthatarevaluableinnearlyeveryfieldofstudy.Thisclasswillprepareyoutoreasonbetter,notjustaboutpartiesandturkeys,butaboutwhateverissuesareimportanttoyou,betheyethical,social,practical,orreligious.
PHI 1306.06Introduction to Logic
Padgett106TR 11:00-12:15
There are two main goals for this course: (i) to teach you how to do proofs in the three systems of logic we will look at, and (ii) to give you an understanding of how to construct good arguments (and, consequently, how to spot bad arguments). Put another way, the second goal of the course is to make you a more rigorous thinker. In some ways, (ii) is accomplished through (i). Since logic is the study of inferences at the most general level, if you understand why one claim follows from another, you will better be able to understand whether someone has given you a good argument. In this way the applications of logic are sundry.
PHI 1306.08Introduction to Logic
Bryant110TR 2:00-3:15
Simply put, logic is the study of arguments. We encounter arguments all the time as people try to give us reasons to believe claims about topics ranging from religion, ethics, and politics to less important matters. Some of these arguments are good – they give us good reason to accept their conclusions. Some of them are bad – they do not give us good reason to accept their conclusions. It's important to be able to tell the difference because there are plenty of bad arguments to be had in areas in which it's important to not be deceived. So, you need to study logic because it will help you tell good arguments from bad arguments. As an added bonus, the skills learned in the course will be of particular use to students preparing for exams such the LSAT and the GRE.
This course will introduce you to the basics of logic. Among other things, you will be introduced to Aristotelian logic, propositional logic, truth tables, inductive logic, and fallacies. By studying these topics you will come to understand the structure of arguments and learn how to evaluate arguments that you encounter and construct good ones of your own. This will make you a better person, at least in some respects.
PHI 1307.01 Critical Thinking: Logic, Law and Medicine
Younger106MWF 12:20-1:10
This course teaches skills for critical thinking. Students will learn to clearly articulate and defend their beliefs as well as how to respectfully and constructively critique the beliefs of others. We will use these skills to consider moral issues in medicine, including but not limited to controversies surrounding infertility treatment, health insurance, mental illness and euthanasia. The primary goal of the course is to help students enjoy the life of the mind and develop stronger interpersonal relationships through more meaningful dialogue. Historically, many students also find these skills important in preparing for graduate school examinations, such as the MCAT, LSAT, GRE, etc. and in preparation for job interviews.
PHI 1308.01 Introductory Topics in Ethics: Ethics and Tolkien’s Fiction
Beary106MWF 9:05-9:55
ItisnotasecretthatTolkien’sCatholicfaithinformedallhisscholarshipandwriting.Itis,therefore, notsurprising to find thatTheLordoftheRingsand othertales of MiddleEarth presenttheirreaderwithadeeplymoralviewoftheworld.Inthiscourse,wewillreadTolkienalongsideotherauthorslikeThomasAquinasandAlasdairMacIntyreinordertoexploresuchquestionsaswhatdoesbeinggoodmean,whyshouldonebotherbeinggood,andwhethermoralityisultimatelyrelativetogroupsandsocieties.WewillalsoconsiderthefreeracesoftheMiddleEarthandtheirindividualrepresentativeswhenweexaminesuchtopicsastechnology,war,humanrelationshipwithnature,friendship,andgenderroles.
PHI 1308.02 Introductory Topics in Ethics: Living the Good Life
West106MWF 10:10-11:00
What does it take to live a good life? Is it, most fundamentally, about the pursuit of pleasure, fame, or wealth? Or does happiness come from pursuing a life of moral virtue? Or from following the commands of reason? Or from calculating the best possible consequences of our actions? Or from friendship with God? Is happiness something we invent, or something to be discovered and pursued? Through an exploration of some significant figures in the history of ethics (including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Mill, and Nietzsche) along with more recent thinkers (such as C. S. Lewis and Robert C. Roberts), this course will examine these and related questions. As we read, discuss, and write about these questions, we will try to gain a deeper awareness of what the truly happy life might be—and how we might live it.
PHI 1308.03 Introductory Topics in Ethics: Love and Sex
Pruss108TR 9:30-10:45
Love is essential to a flourishing human life. But love comes in many forms: love between parents and children, comfortable affection between close friends, passionate romantic love, charity in reaching out to a stranger in kindness, the mysterious relationship between God and human beings, caring respect among co-workers, and so on. One of the things we will be examining is what, if anything, do all of these things have in common that one might call them all ―love‖? We will specifically look at two kinds of love: friendship and romantic love. What reasons do we have for having and being friends? How should we choose our friends? How is romantic love different from friendship? The first half of the course will be devoted to questions about love, friendship and romantic love. We will read Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Soren Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis as well as some recent philosophical pieces. In the second half, we will try to apply what we have learned about love to questions about marriage and sexuality. What is marriage and should one bother with it? What is sex and should one bother with it? We will end by looking at specific controversial questions like pornography, pre-marital sex, contraception and homosexuality, hoping to gain an understanding of the arguments on both sides of these heated debates, and to engage in these debates in a cool and rational way. Authors read in this second part of the course will include, among others, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Andrea Dworkin, John Paul II and Peter Singer. We will not shy away from theological questions along the way, and indeed some of the texts we will read will have a significant theological component, though we will approach them primarily in a philosophical way, through rational argument.
PHI 1308.04 Introductory Topics in Ethics: Contemporary Ethical Issues
Tweedt106TR 12:30-1:45
In the first part of this course, we’ll discuss and answer some of the most difficult questions in ethics: Is there an objective standard for what’s right and wrong? If so, what makes an action right or wrong? How should we decide what to do in tough situations? Can we luckily end up doing the right thing? Do moral standards give us a good reason to think God exists? And if it does, what is the relationship between God and moral standards? In the second part of this course, we’ll consider particular cases: Is it ever okay to violate someone’s privacy, and if so, when? Is it ever okay to do something you know is wrong to an individual if you know it will greatly benefit larger numbers of people? Is abortion morally permissible? We’ll discuss these and other issues with the goal of both understanding the main arguments and learning how to reason about ethics in a clear and effective way.
PHI 1309.01Introduction to Medical Ethics
Beaty108TR 11:00-12:15
This course is an introduction to Medical Ethics. The course surveys three clusters of issues in medical practice that are fraught with moral and legal puzzles: the relation between patients and health care professionals (e.g. confidentiality, truth-telling, informed consent, and so on); intervention in the beginning and ending of human life (e.g., abortion, treatment of seriously ill infants, physician assisted suicide, etc.); and the just distribution of resources (e.g. health care reform, emphasis on primary care vs. specialization, etc.). We will think also about the extent to which one’s faith commitments -- one’s world view (Buddhism, Christian Theism, Judaism, being Muslim, Naturalism, Nation-State Liberalism, or modern hedonisms, etc.) -- are appropriate, relevant features of such discussions. For example, can we speak meaningfully of Christian medical ethics in contrast to secular approach to medical ethics? If so, how does such a perspective differ from self-identified secular approach?
PHI 1321.01 Introductory Topics in Philosophy
Anderson108MWF 10:10-11:00
Weallwantanswers,butrarelyexaminethequestionsweask.Howdowequestionwell?Istheresuchathingasabadquestion?CanIbeconfidentinwhatIknow?Inthiscourse,wewilllookattheseandothercentralphilosophicalquestions,usingclosereadingsofclassicalandcontemporarytextsasourstartingpoints—worksfromPlato,Aristotle,Descartes,andHume,amongothers,thenmovingtomodernauthorssuchasC.S.Lewis.Classeswillbediscussionbased—composedofverylittletonolecture.Instead,wewillwrestlewithbigideasandhardquestionsthroughSocraticdialogue.
PHI 1321.02Introductory Topics in Philosophy
Dougherty106TR 9:30-10:45
Most know Lewis through his "children's" books, The Chronicles of Narnia. But Lewis was a man acquainted with grief from childhood through his adult life. In this class we will read Lewis's autobiographical reflections on the death of his beloved wife, as well was examine his treatment of death and suffering in his fiction and essays. Like the Oxford system in which Lewis was educated, the class is discussion-based and there is a reading journal, a mid-term essay of 2400-2800 words, and a final project.
PHI 2305.01Philosophy and Religion
Buras105MWF 11:15-12:05
This class explores the intersection between philosophy and religion by examining the philosophical questions raised by death and Christian beliefs about the afterlife. Is death to be feared? Can death harm us? Is life after death even possible? Is it reasonable to hold any beliefs at all about what happens beyond the grave? Are specially Christian teachings about life after death coherent? Plato taught that philosophy, practiced properly, is nothing other than preparation for death. This course will aim to be philosophical in this ancient sense of the term.
PHI 3301.01Moral Philosophy
Kruschwitz105TR 11:00-12:15
How can we make sense of morality and its relationship to human happiness and well-being? What kinds of lives should we choose and what sort of character we should we aspire to have? After we examine the challenges to the institution of morality from Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), we will compare the rich moral psychologies and normative ethical theories of four pivotal thinkers. In the theories of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) we encounter a “modern” conception of human freedom that places God at arm’s length in the moral life and shifts the focus to rules and obligations. Like Aristotle (384-322 BC), who lived fifteen centuries before, Aquinas (1225-1274) emphasizes the roles of happiness, virtues and vices, and character formation in the moral life, but with new twists that derive from the biblical view of morality. Class sessions feature small group discussions and presentations as well as mini-lectures.
PHI 3310.01History of Philosophy – Classical
Roberts105MWF 9:05-9:55
The practitioners of ancient Greek philosophy designed it not just to tickle our minds and make us think, but to make us think as human beings so that we might become better and wiser human beings. In PHI 3310 we will read some of the oldest, most influential, most beautiful, and greatest texts in the history of Western philosophy, mostly from Plato and Aristotle, and will try to let the texts work on our minds in the way they were designed to work. These texts have set questions that are still seriously discussed today, and have shaped the philosophy, literature, and more broadly the thinking, of Western civilization.
PHI 3312.01History of Modern European Philosophy
Evans105TR 9:30-10:45
This course is designed to provide the student with a basic acquaintance with the most important western philosophers of the modern period (roughly 1600-1900)--both their ideas and arguments--and with a few of the most important texts of that period. Of course the vast amount of terrain means the coverage will be selective; nevertheless, the aim of the course is to provide a comprehensive overview of an important three hundred years or so of philosophy in the west. Major overarching themes and continuing problems will be highlighted, and attention will be given to understanding the implications of this history for the situation of philosophy today. We will also look at the role Christian faith has played in the history of philosophy and the implications of that history for faith today.
PHI 3320.01Philosophical Issues in Feminism
Wright105TR 2:00-3:15
Feminist theorists have challenged the negative assessment of the body within philosophical discourse. This course will survey recent developments in feminist philosophy, focusing on the contested nature of embodiment in feminist thought and the intersections between feminist philosophy as it is historically understood and developing debates within body studies, one area of feminist theory. Topics will include theories and definitions of gender, cultural inscriptions and evaluations of the body, theories of power and politics of the body, evaluations of the body in science and biomedicine, and assessments of the position of women in the history and discipline of philosophy. No philosophy background is necessary, but readings will approach feminism from a philosophical point of view.
PHI 4311.01Epistemology
Dougherty106TR 2:00-3:15
This class surveys a number of core issues in contemporary epistemology concerning knowledge, evidence, justification of belief, the relationship between belief and action, skepticism, intellectual virtue, and the ultimate intellectual goods. As the title suggests, the readings will all be debates between adherents to opposing views, which should make for a lively class. Naturally, the class will be mostly discussion-based.
PHI 4320.01Philosophy of Religion
Evans110TR 11:00-12:15
This seminar-style course will focus on the question of the relationship between God and morality. Dostoevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov famously claimed that if God does not exist, then “everything is permitted.” We will examine a number of arguments intended to show that God is in some way essential to morality, as well as arguments designed to show that morality is independent of God. Philosophers who will be considered include classical philosophers such as Aquinas and Kant, as well as more contemporary thinkers (such as C. S. Lewis, Erik Wielenberg, Robert Adams, C. Stephen Evans, and Angus Ritchie).
PHI 4324.01Philosophy in Literature
Jacobs108MW 1:00-2:15
PHILOSOPHY VERSUS LITERATURE starts from the reference in theRepublicto "the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry." We will explore the relations between philosophy and literature, asking whether they must "quarrel" or whether they can be complementary means of approaching truth; we will ask further whether there are distinctive varieties of serious philosophical work that literature is best suited to do. In addition to the relevant portions of theRepublic, texts may include: