Upper-Division Course Descriptions
Fall 2008
PHIL 3332 (Class #35321)
Room: TBA
Meeting Time: 11:30-13:00 TTH
Philosophy of Language
This course will survey the major developments in philosophical thought about language from roughly 1900 onward. Some of the questions we will explore:
- Is language a social artifact, a biological capacity, or something else?
- How does the meaning of a sentence depend on the meanings of its parts?
- Just what are meanings, anyways?
- What's the meaning of a name like 'George Bush'? A name like 'Harry Potter'? A definite description like 'the President of the United States' or 'the present king of France'?
- What can the study of language tell us about non-linguistic bits of the world?
Most readings will be drawn from A. P. Martinich's Philosophy of Language and from Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity. Course requirements will be set at a future date.
PHIL 3349 (Class #32525)
Room: TBA
Meeting Time: 13:00 - 14:30 TTH
Philosophy of Social Sciences
How well do we know our own minds? How in control of our actions are we? Are our choices really rational, or are they a product of less reasoned biases and gut feelings? A range of experimental results in social psychology, economics, and the cognitive neurosciences suggests that we know ourselves much less well than we commonly think and that we often act on cognitive autopilot. In psychologist Timothy Wilson’s words, it seems that we are “strangers to ourselves.?
In this course, we will evaluate these experimental results, in order to determine if such radical claims about who we are and how we reason are warranted. We will consider the methods of the sciences in question, the inherent difficulties in developing and confirming models of human psychology, and the challenges of extending empirical data into the philosopher’s territory of mind, reason, and self. Perhaps the data undermine some of our cherished folk-psychological notions. But even if we find that the grander claims based on these interesting results cannot be supported, our commonsense view of who we are will be clarified by the contrast. And this is a useful outcome in any event.
The course will focus on selected readings from several recent books, both popular and scholarly. Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink is a good introduction to the field. Timothy Wilson’s Strangers to Ourselves and Gerd Gigenzer’s Gut Feelings provide a more detailed overview and analysis of the social psychological experiments in question. And Joseph LeDoux’s The Emotional Brain Michael Gazzaniga’s The Ethical Brain offer a tour of relevant research in the neurosciences. We will also consider the primary source papers from the relevant researchers.
The course requirements for undergraduates include two short papers on assigned topics and a longer research paper for the final. Graduate students are required to make one class presentation on a section of the readings and write a research term paper
PHIL 3354 (Class #32412)
Room: TBA
Meeting Time: 13:00 - 14:30 MW
Medical Ethics
This course will focus mainly (about 2/3) on "micro level" issues, and about 1/3 on public policy issues. The first part will concern doctor-patient relations, medical decision-making, issues of life and death, and possibly issues about clinical trials. (We won't cover ALL of these areas.) The second part will look at problems about medical insurance, both private and public, and access to medical care.
There will be two papers, a midterm and a final.
Main Text: Munson, Intervention and Reflection, 8th edn.
Prof. Morrison
PHIL 3358 (Class #27174)
Room: TBA
Meeting Time: 09:00 - 10:00 MWF
Classics in the History of Ethics
PHIL 3361 (Class #32413)
Room: TBA
Meeting Time: 10:00 - 11:30 TTH
Aesthetics
An examination of recent work in aesthetics. We begin with a book (Shiner) that analyzes the historical evolution of modern notions of art and aesthetic value. We then consider recent debates (in Kieran) about representation, expression, the role of imagination in art, the basis of interpretation, and interactions between ethics and aesthetics. Our final text (Wartenberg) defends the claim that artworks, and in particular films, can “do? philosophy.
Required Books
- The Invention of Art: A Cultural History, by Larry Shiner, Chicago: 2001. ISBN: 0-226-75343-3
- Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran. Blackwell: 2006. ISBN: 1-4051-0240-3
- Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy, by Thomas Wartenberg. Routledge; 1 edition (December 14, 2007). ISBN: 0415774314
Recommended Books
- Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) (Paperback) by Noël Carroll (Author). Routledge; 1 edition (October 20, 1999). ISBN: 0415159644
PHIL 3382 (Class #32408)
Room: TBA
Meeting Time: 11:30 - 13:00 TTH
Medieval Philosophy
In this course we will grapple with several philosophical and theological questions central to the Middle Ages such as:
- What is the relationship between religion and philosophy, faith and reason?
- Do humans have free will and can this be reconciled with divine foreknowledge?
- Can the existence of God be proven and if so how?
- What makes our actions virtuous versus sinful?
- Where does knowledge come from and what kinds of things can we know?
- What is the nature and source of political authority?
We will favor the in-depth reading and discussion of key texts in which medieval philosophers seek to answer these questions over an exhaustive overview of the medieval period. However, we will, for the most part, proceed in chronological order, starting with the Church Fathers and ending with William of Ockham, and we will study some of the most influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.
Our focus will be on seminal texts such as St Augustine’s Confessions and On Free Choice of the Will, St Anselm’s Proslogion and his Replies to Guanilo, selections from Peter Abelard’s famous correspondence with Heloise as well as his Ethical Writings, and from St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica. We will also spend part of the course reading equally important non-Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as the Islamic philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. We will conclude with selections from John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham whose theories anticipate the moderns.
PHIL 3388 (Class #32410)
Room: TBA
Meeting Time: 10:00 - 11:30 TTH
History of 20th-Century Philosophy
The course will introduce the student to some of the most prominent philosophers of the Twentieth Century. It will include such figures as: Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Quine, Putnam and Rorty. Some choices as to which figures to cover will be left to the class. The course will be centered around two themes that appear and reappear in this work. One is the search for the foundations of knowledge, and another the search for values.
Philosophy in the twentieth century is thought be divided into two very different camps: the Analytic and the Continental schools. However one purpose of the class will be to show parallels rather than differences in thinking between the two traditions.
There will be weekly reading assignments drawn from the text, Twentieth-Century Philosophy by F. Baird and W. Kaufmann (Eds.)
There will be a midterm and a final and 3 short papers (about 300 words each).