Philosophy - PHL (28)
Administered by Department of Philosophy
Effective Fall 2009
28.110 Critical Thinking (3) - Designed for students to learn how to think critically. Emphasis is on the construction and evaluation of arguments. Surveys several forms of argument including inductive, deductive, analogical and legal reasoning. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.111 Introduction to Philosophy (3) - Presents reflective inquiry into selected problems of general philosophic interest. Considers the types of knowledge, individual and social values, free will, the nature of the self, the nature of reality and the existence of God. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.115 Introduction to Religious Studies (3) – An introduction into the various ways we describe, think and experience religion. The course will develop understandings of the vocabulary and concepts in order to examine and analyze the multitude of forms, contents and functions of religious belief and ritual (or lack thereof) present in our world. This course will take a somewhat multi/inter-disciplinary approach, taking into account various methods in studying religion, and addition to taking a bit of a reflective turn in looking critically at how we understand religion, the sacred, and faith in our own lives. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week. Prerequisites: None.
28.270 Logic (3) - The study of formal deductive reasoning, course covers, sentential logic, predicate logic and quantification and proof theory. Students translate from natural language into logical formulas and examine methods for detecting the logical properties of the resulting formulas. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week. Prerequisite: Students must have completed 24 credit hours in any field or have permission of the instructor to take this course.
28.290 Medical Ethics (3) - Investigates moral issues that arise in such medical contexts as human experimentation, death and dying, medical care and its distribution, genetic engineering and the definition of health and illness. This course approved as 3 credits of Values, Ethics and Responsible Decision Making toward general education requirements/This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.292 Contemporary Moral Problems (3) - Investigates some of the major contemporary (and perennial) moral problems: abortion and the rights of the fetus; pornography and its control; crime and its punishment; obedience to laws; discrimination based on race and sex; decision-making procedures; social justice; drugs, suicide and euthanasia; freedom and its limits. This course approved as 3 credits of Values, Ethics and Responsible Decision Making toward general education requirements/This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.295 Business Ethics (Spring) (3) - Review of moral canons in relation to business practice. Moral concepts are applied in analyzing situations. Utilitarianism, Kantianism and contemporary Egalitarianism are introduced as aids in decision making. General principles and concrete cases considered. This course approved as 3 credits of Values, Ethics and Responsible Decision Making toward general education requirements/This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.297 Ethics (3) - Studies ethical theory focusing on such issues as ethics as a branch of knowledge, egoism vs. altruism and role of intentions and consequences in moral judgments. Reviews theories such as relativism, utilitarianism and Kantianism. Investigates concepts of “rights” and “justice”. This course approved as 3 credits of Values, Ethics and Responsible Decision Making toward general education requirements/This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.321 Plato and Aristotle (Fall) (3) - Studies the origins of Western philosophy in ancient Greece. Examines Plato's philosophical writings in light of pre-Socratic speculation on one hand and in terms of Aristotle's criticisms and developments on the other. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.324 Descartes to Kant (Spring) (3) - Examines the writings of the 17th and 18th century philosophers: Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant and others. Topics include: the nature of reality, the sources and limits of knowledge, the relation between mind and body and the possibility of a rational basis for religious belief. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.328 Existentialism (Spring) (3) - Studies the writings of philosophers and theologians such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Sartre, Camus, and Dostoevsky. Major themes include human subjectivity, human freedom, alienation and meaning. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.329 20th Century Philosophy (Fall) (3) - Examines 20th century philosophical movements. Emphasizes the relation between language and philosophy, particularly views about truth, free will, the nature of morality and religion and the nature of mind. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.340 Religious Liberty (3) - Survey of church-state relations in western society from ancient times to the present with special attention given to the historical antecedents and development of separation of church and state in America as well as recent constitutional debates concerning the religion clauses of the First Amendment. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week. Prerequisites: None.
28.403 Philosophy of Science (3) – Explores the philosophical issues that arise concerning the interpretation, development, comparison, and demise of scientific theories, including (and not limited to) topics in scientific versus non-scientific knowledge, confirmation and induction, scientific change and revolution, the reduction of one theory to another, realist versus anti-realist interpretations of scientific theories, and the bearing of social factors upon scientific development. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.404 Philosophy of the Social Sciences (3) - Examines philosophical problems in the social sciences including objectivity, classification, explanation, the nature of laws and the nature of social facts. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.405 Philosophy of Law (Fall/even-numbered years) (3) - Examines the theoretical background of the law and legal systems. Encourages students to develop their own views about the proper use of the law. Topics include the concepts of “law” and “legal system”, limits of the law and justification of punishment. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.406 Philosophy of Religion (3) - Presents a critical analysis of the origins and nature of faith. Emphasizes types of religion, evidence supporting religious belief and problems in and challenges to religion. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.407 Contemporary Political Philosophy (Fall/odd-numbered years) (3) - Studies the nature of the good and just state, the limits and powers of the state. Investigates competing theories of neo-Aristotelianism, utilitarianism, contractarianism, libertarianism, Marxism and anarchism. Addresses questions concerning the obligations of an individual citizen to the state. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.408 Feminist Philosophy (3) - Explores the major trends in feminist philosophy including liberal, Marxist, socialist, radical and psychoanalytic approaches. Explores such questions as whether women's experience differs from men's and the extent to which male domination informs woman's experience. Considers recent feminist attempts to articulate an emancipating standpoint. This course is approved as a Diversity General Education Course/This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.409 Philosophy and Aesthetic Experience (3) - Students will pursue some of the classic texts relevant to philosophical aesthetics, for example, those found in Immanual Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer. We will then turn our attention to questions concerning the perceptual, cognitive, and contextual components relevant to aesthetic experience with particular focus on what qualties, objects, or phenomena constitute the proper objects of experience designated as aesthetic. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Prerequisites: None. Three hours lecture per week.
28.418 Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (Fall/even-numbered years) (3) - Explores the philosophical foundations of the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. Topics discussed include contemporary scientific solutions to the mind-body problem, the possibility of artificial intelligence and the nature and success of cognitive explanations in psychology. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week.
28.419 Theory of Knowledge (Spring/odd-numbered years) (3) - Inquires into the problem of knowledge, certainty and skepticism. Reviews theories of justification, induction, and intellectual duty. This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week. Prerequisite: at least one philosophy course other than 28.110 or 28.270 is required.
28.420 Metaphysics (Spring/even-numbered years) (3) - Introduces the main themes and literature in contemporary metaphysics. Issues explored include why there is something rather than nothing? Are there properties, numbers, propositions and sets? What are holes, surfaces and boundaries? Can an object change its parts and remain the same? This course counts as a Group A, Humanities and The Arts General Education Requirements. Three hours lecture per week. Prerequisite: at least one philosophy course other than 28.110 or 28.270 is required.
28.470 Independent Study in Philosophy (3-6) - Provides for individual study of a particular philosophical problem under the guidance of the staff. Emphasizes independent research on topics selected by the student and the faculty member. Course may be taken twice. Prerequisite: 6 semester hours of philosophy. See section on Independent Study.
28.471 Seminar (3) - Studies selected problems in philosophy. Three hours lecture per week.