Fall 2022 Courses

PHIL 101: Logic 

Joel Martinez TTH 9:40am-11:10am

Analyses of arguments with an emphasis on formal analysis. Propositional and predicate calculus, deductive techniques, and translation into symbolic notation.

Prerequisites: None. 

PHIL 102: Introduction to Philosophy

J.M. Fritzman MWF 9:10am-10:10am

Per Millam MWF 12:40pm-1:40pm

Introduction to problems and fields of philosophy through the study of major philosophers’ works and other philosophical texts. Specific content varies with instructor.

Prerequisites: None.

PHIL 103: Ethics

Colin Patrick MWF 10:20am-11:20am

Fundamental issues in moral philosophy and their application to contemporary life.

Prerequisites: None.

PHIL 203: Philosophy of Art and Beauty

Phillip Barron TTH 9:40am-11:10am

Theorizing about art. Puzzles in art that suggest the need to theorize; traditional discussions of art in Plato and Aristotle and critiques of them (Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Collingwood); critical perspectives on these discussions (Danto). Specific discussions of individual arts: literature, drama, film, music, dance, the plastic arts.

Prerequisites: None.

PHIL 207: Indian Philosophy

J.M. Fritzman MWF 10:20am-11:20am

Survey of India’s classical philosophies as well as introductions to the Vedas, the Upanishads, Carvaka, Jainism, Buddhism, and recent Indian philosophers.

Prerequisites: None.

PHIL 217: Science, Politics & Soc. Just.

Colin Patrick MWF 9:10am-10:10am 

This course critically examines how the sciences inform social practices and policies, impact human well-being, support – or threaten – democratic institutions, and the ways they are shaped by the socio-economic world in which they are embedded, both historically and today. Topics will include the origins of western scientific method and its connection(s) to capitalism; the similarities and differences between western and Indigenous epistemologies and methods – and the implications for how we frame current Indigenous struggles; the concept of evidence-based public policy; climate change and migration; poverty; forestry and land use; the politics of cartography; border patrolling and surveillance in the interest of public health; and the scientific merit – or otherwise – of sociobiology and genetic determinism about intelligence, race, gender, and social hierarchies.

Prerequisites: None. 

PHIL 217: Phenomenology & Existentialism

Phillip Barron TTH 1:50pm-3:20pm

This course focuses on the philosophical schools known as phenomenology and existentialism. Phenomenology, as we will see, is an attempt to formalize ways of understanding the shared experience of the world, while existentialism refers to a collection of philosophies focused on themes of freedom, anguish, dread, meaning, responsibility, embodied agency, sociality, and liberation. This is a class about us, because, to paraphrase Martin Heidegger, a person is a being for whom one’s being is an issue.

In this way, both phenomenology and existentialism focus on the possibility of meaning in human life and experience. We will make some sense of the questions and problems that, as human beings, we are confronted with by reading classic existentialist texts of the European and African diasporic philosophical traditions.

Prerequisites: None.

PHIL 241: Data, Privacy and Ethics 

Joel Martinez TTH 8:00am-9:30am

Exploration of ethical implications specific to data collection, study design, data analysis, and the dissemination and application of data. Practical guidance about how to uncover ethical weaknesses in existing protocols and how to undertake constructive, effective, fair data scientific research and application of automated processes. Survey of technological advances in strategies for collecting data, implementing studies, analyzing data, and disseminating findings both to broad public audiences and to narrow groups who are disproportionately impacted. Explores research on the consequences of choices made by human and machine actors and assemblages of human-in-the-loop sociotechnical systems. Focuses on both legal and ethical frameworks.

Prerequisites: None.

PHIL 250: Philosophical Methods

Jay Odenbaugh TTH 1:50pm-3:20pm

Some of the main methods, concepts, distinctions, and areas of systematic philosophical inquiry. Including basic tools for argument, such as validity, soundness, probability, and thought experiments; basic tools for assessment, such as the rule of excluded middle, category mistakes, and conceivability; and basic tools for conceptual distinctions, such as a priori versus a posteriori and analytic versus synthetic. Includes methods, such as the history of philosophy, naturalized philosophy, conceptual analysis, and phenomenology, as well as areas of systemic philosophical approach, such as empiricism, rationalism, naturalism, realism, idealism, internalism, externalism, and nominalism.

Prerequisites: PHIL 101

PHIL 301: Ancient Western Philosophy

Joel Martinez TTH 1:50pm-3:20pm

The birth of philosophy against the background of mythic thought; its development from Socrates to the mature systems of Plato and Aristotle; their continuation and transformation in examples of Hellenistic thought.

Prerequisites: Any 100- or 200-level philosophy course.

Restrictions: Sophomore standing required.

PHIL 302: Early Modern Philosophy 

Phillip Barron T 6:00pm-9:00pm

Development of modern ideas in the historical context of 17th- and 18th-century Europe: reason, mind, perception, nature, the individual, scientific knowledge. Reading, discussing, and writing about the works of Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant.

Prerequisites: Any 100- or 200-level philosophy course.

Restrictions: Sophomore standing required.

PHIL 312: Philosophy of Language

Jay Odenbaugh TTH 9:40am-11:10am

Philosophical issues concerning truth, meaning, and language in the writings of 20th-century thinkers such as Frege, Russell, Grice, Putnam, Quine, Searle, Kripke.

Prerequisites: PHIL 101. PHIL 250. PHIL 102 or one course in the history of
philosophy sequence (PHIL 301 through PHIL 307) recommended.

Restrictions: Sophomore standing required.