Philosophy Courses -- Fall 2008

PHIL2300 - BEGINNING PHILOSOPHY

Section	Time	Days	Instructor
SEC 003	1000AM 1050AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 004	0900AM 0950AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 001	0200PM 0320PM	TR	DI POPPA, F
DIS 701	1200PM 1250PM	F	STAFF
DIS 702	0100PM 0150PM	F	STAFF
DIS 703	0200PM 0250PM	F	STAFF
DIS 704	0300PM 0350PM	F	STAFF
SEC 006	0930AM 1050AM	TR	BECK, J
DIS 705	0200PM 0250PM	F	STAFF
DIS 706	0300PM 0350PM	F	STAFF
DIS 707	1200PM 1250PM	F	STAFF
DIS 708	0100PM 0150PM	F	STAFF

PHIL2310 - LOGIC

SEC 002	1100AM 1150AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 003	1000AM 1050AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 001	1230PM 0150PM	TR	KIM, S
DIS 701	1200PM 1250PM	M	STAFF
DIS 702	0100PM 0150PM	M	STAFF
DIS 703	1200PM 1250PM	W	STAFF
DIS 704	0100PM 0150PM	W	STAFF
SEC 005	1000AM 1050AM	MWF	HOM, C
DIS 705	1200PM 1250PM	M	STAFF
DIS 706	0100PM 0150PM	M	STAFF
DIS 707	1200PM 1250PM	W	STAFF
DIS 708	0100PM 0150PM	W	STAFF

PHIL2320 - INTRO ETHICS

SEC 002	1000AM 1050AM	MWF	SCHALLER, W
SEC 003	1000AM 1050AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 004	1100AM 1150AM	MWF	SCHALLER, W
SEC 005	0900AM 0950AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 001	1100AM 1220PM	TR	CURZER, H
DIS 701	1200PM 1250PM	W	STAFF
DIS 702	0100PM 0150PM	W	STAFF
DIS 703	0100PM 0150PM	W	STAFF
DIS 704	1200PM 1250PM	W	STAFF

PHIL2350 - WORLD RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHY

SEC 001	1100AM 1150AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 003	1000AM 1050AM	MWF	STAFF
SEC 002	0900AM 0950AM	MWF	WEBB, M
DIS 701	0200PM 0250PM	F	STAFF
DIS 702	0300PM 0350PM	F	STAFF
DIS 703	0300PM 0350PM	F	STAFF
DIS 704	0200PM 0250PM	F	STAFF

PHIL3301 - CLASSICAL GREEK PHIL

SEC 001

0930AM 1050AM

CURZER, H

PHIL3321 - PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

SEC 001

1230PM 0150PM

NATHAN, D

PHIL3330 - PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

SEC 001

0200PM 0320PM

KIM, S

PHIL4330 - EPISTEMOLOGY

SEC OO1

1100AM 1150AM

MWF

HOM, C

PHIL5310 - HISTORY OF AESTHETICS

SEC 001

1100AM 1220PM

DI POPPA, F

PHIL5311 - LOGIC AND EPISTEMOLOGY

SEC 001

0200PM 0320PM

BECK, J

PHIL5320 - SEMINAR IN ETHICS

SEC 001

0330PM 0450PM

NATHAN, D

PHIL5321 - SOCIAL/POLITICAL PHIL

SEC 001

0200PM 0320PM

SCHALLER, W

PHIL5350 - SEMINAR IN TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

SEC 001

0330PM 0620PM

RIBEIRO, A

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

PHIL 2300 – Beginning Philosophy

An introduction to philosophical thinkers, ideas, and methods.

PHIL 2300-001 – Beginning Philosophy

Francesca Di Poppa

This is a general introduction to philosophy, designed to acquaint students with certain significant problems as they are considered by major philosophical figures. These are not esoteric questions but instead ones central to ordinary human experience. Students will be encouraged to formulate and defend their own answers to these questions, using the concepts and methods of inquiry introduced in the course. This process will help improve students’ abilities to think more critically and to communicate with greater clarity and precision.

PHIL 2310 – Logic

Development of formal methods for evaluating deductive reasoning. Additional topics may include uses of language, definition, non-deductive inference. Satisfies the Core Curriculum mathematics requirement (in conjunction with a mathematics course).

PHIL 2310-005 – Logic

Christopher Hom

A central aspect of cogent reasoning is the ability to form good arguments. Logic is the formal representation of arguments, so mastering logic is essential for good critical thinking. In this course, we will investigate the logical form of sentences and the deductive relations that hold between them, thus giving us deeper insight into the notion of a conclusion ‘following from’ premises. We will precisely work with such notions as schemata, interpretation, implication, validity, satisfiability, and identity. The course will present four logical systems, each increasing in expressive power: 1) sentential logic, 2) monadic quantificational logic, 3) polyadic quantificational logic, and 4) polyadic quantificational logic with identity. The investigation of each system will be divided into three sub-parts: a) analysis, which presents the syntax, b) logical assessment, which presents the semantics, and c) reflection, which makes metatheoretic observations about the system.

PHIL 2320-001 – Introduction to Ethics

Howard Curzer

The class will compare and contrast the moral theories of Mill, Kant, and Aristotle. We will also apply each of these famous moral theories to the contemporary moral problems of abortion, sexual perversion, and euthanasia. Thus, we will use, as well as contemplate, three theories. And we will end up examining not just one, but three different perspectives on each problem.

PHIL 2320-002/004 – Introduction to Ethics

Walter Schaller

Three questions provide the themes for this course: (1) When (if ever) is it morally permissible to kill? (2) What are the legitimate limits to the liberty of individuals? and (3) What do affluent people owe to the global poor (basically, the billion people living in absolute poverty)?

Most of us think that killing (human beings) is sometimes justified (e.g., self-defense, capital punishment), but those usually do not involve killing innocent people. We will ask the harder and more fundamental question: Is it ever morally permissible to kill innocent people? That raises an even harder question: Is it worse to kill one person than to allow a greater number to die? How should we be guided in thinking about this question? What moral factors are relevant? Should we take into account only the (likely) consequences of the various actions open to us?

The second question asks: when is it morally permissible for the state to use coercion in order to limit people’s freedom of action? Most people think that legal coercion is sometimes justified (or else laws could never be enforced, and where would we be without laws?). But which laws are justified? For example, is the state morally justified in using the law to enforce the majority’s moral beliefs on everyone, whether they agree or not? In particular, we will ask whether the law ought to recognize same-sex marriages. If the state insists that marriage can only be between one man and one woman, is that sex discrimination? Or is it the legitimate deference to majority opinion?

The third question addresses the problem of global poverty? Do people have a right to a minimally adequate standard of living? If other people are starving, is helping them a matter of charity or a requirement of justice? Does anyone have a moral duty to help them?

In addition to readings on these specific questions, we will study the moral theories of John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. What insights can they offer as we try to answer these two questions? THIS COURSE FULFILLS THE CORE CURRICULUM HUMANITIES REQUIREMENT.

PHIL 3301 - Classical Greek Philosophy

Howard Curzer

This course will focus on the epistemology and ethics of Plato and Aristotle. What do Plato and Aristotle say about epistemology? About ethics? In what ways are epistemology and ethics interrelated in Plato’s philosophy? In Aristotle’s philosophy? In what ways do Plato and Aristotle agree with each other about epistemology and ethics? In what ways do they disagree? Perhaps the most important question of the course is this. What can we learn from Plato and Aristotle about epistemology, ethics, and their relationship?

TEXTS:

Plato: Euthyphro, Charmides, Protagoras, Meno, Theaetetus, Republic

Aristotle: Ethics, De Anima, Post. Analytics

PHIL 3321 – Philosophy of Law

Daniel Nathan

Every year, the Supreme Court sends down a number of decisions that engage broad popular interest—recently, for example, addressing the death penalty, gun control, homosexual rights, and the government’s use of torture and intrusive surveillance techniques. Each of these decisions has been viewed by the general public as highly controversial, and has generated a broad spectrum of political and personal responses. But popular political views rarely reflect an understanding of the nature of law and legal systems, or a familiarity with the Court’s reasoning in relevant previous cases, or even a superficial acquaintance with philosophically and legally reasonable views of the ideas of justice, privacy, or liberty. This course will try to remedy such gaps in understanding, first by studying the nature of law and its relation to morality, then by turning its focus to the nature of justice, privacy, and liberty in specific relation to the legal issues raised by Supreme Court cases during the past two or three years.

PHIL 3330 – Philosophy Of Science

Sungsu Kim

Is astrology science? If so, why? If not, why? What about creationism? If astrology or creationism is not science, is there any difference between astrology and a false theory like flat earth theory or phlogiston theory? In this course, we will examine some of the main philosophical issues concerning the nature of scientific explanation and the confirmation relation between theory and evidence as well as the ideas of probability and causality: What’s the form of explanation? Is it a kind of deduction or induction or something else? What about confirmation? Can probability capture the logic of testability? We will also examine the idea of “scientific revolutions”: To what extent do psychological and sociological factors influence theory choice by scientists? Does science progress or merely change? Some claim that a theory’s predictive success warrants belief in the unobservable entities and some deny this claim. We will discuss this and some related issues and its implication for scientific realism.

PHIL 4330 – Epistemology

Christopher Hom

Epistemology studies the nature and scope of knowledge. This course will examine the closely related concepts of knowledge, belief, justification, rationality, inference, perception and certainty. The central questions in this course are:

* Are we even capable of knowledge, and to what extent?

* What is knowledge (as opposed to belief or opinion)?

* When is it rational to have a particular belief?

* What, if anything, justifies logic, science, and perception as sources of knowledge?

* Should epistemology be a branch of cognitive science?

* Will attempts to define ordinary language concepts like “knowledge” ever succeed?

These questions will be asked within a traditional analytic framework, and students will be exposed to the central problems, positions and outlooks in contemporary epistemology. In Unit I we will explore the problem of skepticism and ask whether we can even have knowledge at all. We will also present Gettier-style counterexamples to the traditional analysis of knowledge. In Unit II, we will look at different ways that epistemologists have tried to analyze the concept of justification. In Unit III, we will closely examine three common sources of knowledge: logic, science and perception. And in Unit IV, we will step back and ask whether epistemology ought to be a branch of cognitive science, and also whether ordinary epistemic intuitions can, and should, be explained.

PHIL 5310 – History of Aesthetics

Francesca Di Poppa

This class will cover classical and modern views on beauty and art. Placing ideas in their historical and cultural context, we will read aesthetic theories and discuss their relation to the artistic practices of the author's contemporaries and their relevance to today's practices. Readings will include (but not be limited to) Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche, Croce.

PHIL 5311 – Issues in Logic and Epistemology

Jacob Beck

REFLECTION, RATIONALITY, & KNOWLEDGE

Epistemic internalists maintain that the capacity for reflection is essential to rationality and knowledge. For your belief that p to be justified, or to count as knowledge, you must be capable of reflecting on it and/or the evidence that supports it. By contrast, epistemic externalists deny that there is any intimate link between reflection on the one hand, and rationality and knowledge on the other. For a belief to be justified it merely needs to have the right etiology--e.g., to be the causal product of a reliable process (a process that tends to generate true beliefs). The aim of this course is to explore this debate between epistemic internalists and externalists, and to get clear on what is at stake in how we settle it. One proposed solution which we will consider in some detail distinguishes between two types of knowledge: animal knowledge, which is largely externalist in character, and human knowledge, which is largely internalist. We will try to determine whether distinguishing two types of knowledge in this way allows for a genuine reconciliation between internalism and externalism, and whether the capacity for reflection truly captures at least part of what is unique about human cognition.

PHIL 5320-001 Seminar in Ethics

Daniel Nathan

The course will begin with an survey of the metaethics literature from the early to mid twentieth century, beginning with G. E. Moore’s attack on naturalism (the supposed “naturalistic fallacy”) and continuing with the dominance of the non-cognitivist positions labeled emotivism and prescriptivism. We will then look at seminal works from the second half of the twentieth century which saw a revival of both naturalism and cognitivism that ultimately both deepened and broadened the metaethical debate. The final third of the course will focus on contemporary discussion of the relation between reason and morals, motivation and moral judgment, and on the plausibility of moral realism.

Texts for the course will be a coursepack of readings plus An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics by Alexander Miller (Polity, 2003), and Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory, edited by James Dreier (Blackwell, 2006).

PHIL 5321: Political Philosophy

Walter Schaller

This course will introduce us to contemporary political philosophy through the works of John Rawls, probably the most important English-language political philosopher of the 20th century. Topics to be covered include: communitarianism (Sandel) vs. libertarianism (Nozick) vs. perfectionism (Raz) vs political liberalism (Rawls, Larmore) vs. comprehensive liberalism (Mill and Kant), Rawls’s critique of utilitarianism, the status of property rights, the justification of liberty, economic justice, liberal neutrality and public justification, public reason, global justice (cosmopolitanism, nationalism, human rights, just war).

Our focus will be on Rawls (especially Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, and The Law of Peoples), but we will take short excursions into the history of moral and political philosophy (e.g., Aristotle, Mill, Kant) and into the contemporary debates (e.g., How can the exercise of political coercion be justified? Is there a general right to liberty? What do rich peoples owe to poor peoples? Is the state justified in promoting particular conceptions of the good life? What principles would a perfectly just society live by? How can those principles be justified? How egalitarian would a just society be? Egalitarian in what sense?) See my Home Page for further information: http://webpages.acs.ttu.edu/wschalle/home.htm

PHIL 5350-001 –Seminar in Teaching Philosophy

Anna Ribeiro

Theory, practice, and problems teaching philosophy for beginning instructors. Development of course objectives, syllabi, and teaching techniques. Practical pedagogical and associated philosophical issues.

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