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Spring 2025 Course Descriptions

PHIL 1000 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY [3]

Prof. MacKenzie – DFS8ZY              Monday & Wednesday 9:00-9:50+ disc sec                           Monroe 110

This course will examine topics from five key areas of philosophy: epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. Questions may include: does God exist? What makes for a meaningful life?  Should we be afraid of death? What are the limits of state authority? Does free will exist? What makes a joke funny? Should we get off social media? What, if anything, can we know? 

 

PHIL 1330 VIRTUAL WORLDS AND PHILOSOPHY [3]

Prof. Cameron – RPC4D                    Tuesday & Thursday 8:00-8:50+ disc sec                              Wilson 301

In this class we will explore the intersection of philosophy with issues concerning virtual reality (VR), computer simulation, artificial intelligence (AI), etc. We will investigate how traditional philosophical problems can be seen in a new light through the lens of VR and AI, as well as showing how VR and AI can raise new and distinctive philosophical issues. The goal is to show how reflection on modern technologies can help us with ancient philosophical questions as well as showing how philosophy can help us in the development of these new technologies and society’s response to them. We will explore questions such as: Can we know that we are not simulated characters in a simulated world?; What does it mean to say that something is a simulation?; Can a simulated world have moral value?; Can a simulated character be conscious?; How ought we to organize society in response to issues raised by VR and AI, such as deepfakes, AI created content, etc.

 

PHIL 1410 FORMS OF REASONING [3]

Prof. Boone –  ASX7FH                     Tuesday & Thursday 2:00-3:15                                              Physics 338     

A philosophy course with a practical aim: to develop the student's ability to recognize and evaluate arguments. The course will not cover symbolic logic in any detail (for this take PHIL 2420), but will concentrate on actual arguments given in ordinary language. Some time will be spent studying those fallacies, or errors in reasoning, which occur most frequently in discussion and argument. The goal of this course is to give the student a working knowledge of logic which has an application to daily life.

 

PHIL 1730 INTRODUCTION TO MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY [3]  

Prof. Adams - NA9FW                      Tuesday & Thursday 8:30-9:20+ disc sec                              Clark 108

In this course we apply the tools of philosophy to problems of human life, flourishing, and community. We will see how philosophy helps us ask the biggest questions about existence but also illuminates mundane aspects of everyday life. We will look at issues that humanity has encountered for millennia as well as issues faced only in our modern moment—from what it means to act well to how social media is affecting us. Our focus is on contemporary philosophy rather than a historical overview. 

 

PHIL 2060 PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS IN LAW [3]

Prof. Motchoulski – AAM5JM          Monday & Wednesday 12:00-12:50+ disc sec                        Wilson 301

Do we have a duty to obey the law? The law thinks so, and breaking the law is often severely punished. But as citizens we often also think law is bad, mistaken, unjust, and that we should disobey the law or even overthrow the government. More specific questions also arise when we accept the rule of law. What sorts of actions should be criminalized and what sorts of punishments are justified? Why do our mental states matter to the law? What is an attempt, and how can we regulate failures? What processes should we use when making legal judgments? What is the relation between law and morality? Law and politics? In this course, we will look at these and similar philosophical problems for life under law.

 

PHIL 2120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY: MODERN [3]

This course satisfies the requirement for History of Philosophy: Modern

Instr. Ziegler – SDE7BF                    Monday & Wednesday 10:00-10:50+ disc sec                      Monroe 110

This course examines a variety of the most influential arguments and figures of the early modern period, focusing primarily on 17th and 18th century European philosophy. Figures studied could include, but are not limited to, René Descartes, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, Emilie du Châtelet, David Hume, Mary Shepherd, and Immanuel Kant. We will focus on both the philosophical developments of the period as well as the broader philosophical and historical context in which the figures we study are writing. This course is suitable for those studying philosophy for the first time as well as more advanced students.

 

PHIL 2350 MINDS, MACHINES, AND PERSON [3]

Prof. Irving – ZCI7C                         Monday & Wednesday 2:00-2:50+ disc sec                          Minor 125

This course surveys foundational issues in the philosophy of cognitive science and mind. Part 1 asks the fundamental question, what is a mind? Are minds brains? Computers? Organisms? Do minds extend into the body and environment? We'll approach these questions by considering what it would take to make a machine with a mind (that is, to make genuine artificial intelligence). Part 2 turns to the problem of personal identity over time. Once you were a kid, now you are an adult, and one day you'll grow old. What (if anything) makes you the same person throughout these stages of your life? The course is suitable for both philosophers and cognitive science majors and does not presume any previous background in either discipline. It’s therefore an ideal introduction to cognitive science for philosophy majors, and to philosophy for cognitive science majors.

 

PHIL 2640 RATIONAL CHOICE AND HAPPINESS [3]

Prof. Barnes – EJB5R                         Tuesday & Thursday 8:00-8:50+ disc sec                              Clark 107

In this class, we will examine philosophical puzzles about our ability to make rational choices that affect or determine our own happiness. How can we rationally decide to undergo a significant experience - such as having a child or moving to a new country - when have no way of knowing what that experience will be like? How can we rationally choose to make decisions about our future (such as what career path to follow or where to live), since who we will become in the future is in part determined by those choices? These kinds of questions will be the focus of the class

 

PHIL 3120 ARISTOTLE [3]

This course satisfies the History requirement for those who have or will take PHIL 2120 – Modern.

Prof. McCready-Flora – ICM5H             Tuesday & Thursday 9:30-10:45                                       Cabell 383

An introduction to the philosophy of Aristotle through close reading of keys texts in translations with the aim of achieving a philosophical understanding of his views and their lasting influence. Readings will focus on his metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and theory of natural science, though expect material from his ethics and social philosophy as well.

 

PHIL 3160 18th CENTURY PHILOSOPHY [3]

This course satisfies History area requirements.

This course satisfies the Second Writing Requirement.

Prof. LoLordo - AL4H                       Monday & Wednesday 5:00-6:15                                          Cabell 132

The over-arching theme of the course is reason, the great preoccupation of 18th century philosophers.  What is reason?  How powerful is it?  For instance, can reason guide our beliefs?  Can reason show us how to achieve happiness?  Does reason ground our worth as human beings?  And who has reason?  All human beings?  Human beings and other animals?  Or just some human beings?

More specific questions include:  Am I essentially a rational being, or something else as well?  Is there an immaterial mind, or is the mind just the body?  What happens after we die?  What does human freedom consist in?  What does happiness consist in?  Can we be happy without being free, or without being rational, or without being virtuous?  How should we structure our society to ensure happiness, freedom, and/or virtue?  How should we educate our children to create happy, free, rational, and/or virtuous adults?  And again, whose happiness, etc. are we talking about?

In this course, we’ll look at a wide range of philosophers.  Some names will probably be familiar to most of you: for instance, John Locke and David Hume.  Some are less familiar: for instance, Ottobah Cugoano and Mary Shepherd.  This will help us see that there is a wider range of people doing philosophy in early modern Europe than has traditionally been thought, and that they had very different, even opposed, social and political goals in doing so.

 

PHIL 3320 EPISTEMOLOGY [3]

Prof. Langsam - HLL6Y                     Monday & Wednesday 5:00-6:15                                          Cabell 168

The course focuses on questions in the theory of knowledge. Topics include: skepticism about knowledge of the external world, the nature of justification, foundationalism, and coherentism, the Gettier problem, internalism and externalism, a priori knowledge, the analytic/synthetic distinction, induction, and the ethics of belief.

 

PHIL 3330 PHILOSOPHY OF MIND [3]

This Course satisfies the Second Writing Requirement

Prof. Boone –  ASX7FH                     Tuesday & Thursday 9:30-10:15                                            Cocke 115

What is the nature of the mind and why do we find its nature so puzzling? We shall critically examine various theories about the nature of the mind; we shall also discuss the nature of particular kinds of mental states and events, such as beliefs, desires, feelings, sensory experiences, and others. We shall be especially concerned with the relations between the mind and the body, and, more generally, between the mental and the physical. Most of the readings will be by contemporary philosophers.

 

PHIL 3400 INTRODUCTION TO NON-CLASSICAL LOGIC [3]

Instructor Permission

Prof. Cameron – RPC4D                    Tuesday & Thursday 11:00-12:15                                          Nau 141

An introduction to systems of non-classical logic, including both extensions and revisions to classical logic. We will look at logical systems that extend classical logic to deal with the phenomena of possibility & time. We will look at logics that revise classical logic to allow for sentences which are neither true nor false, or sentences which can be both. We will show how these departures from classical logic can shed light on various philosophical questions.

                            

PHIL 3500-001 HETERODOXY [3]

Prof. Barnes – EJB5R                         Tuesday & Thursday 11:00-12:15                                          Cocke 115

A heterodox belief is a belief that is in opposition to received wisdom or institutional authority. We live in an era of unprecedented distrust in experts and authorities. We also live in an era in which we sometimes have good reason to distrust experts and authorities: they can be biased, prejudiced, or simply mistaken. Can we tell the difference between good and bad forms of social distrust?

 

PHIL 3500-002 ABORTION AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH [3]

Prof. Payton – MRT4RJ                                 Tuesday & Thursday 12:30-1:45                                Cocke 115           

In this course we will focus on philosophical issues related to abortion and reproductive healthcare in the US. Topics include: the nature and significance of personhood in relation to the moral question of abortion; the source and significance of moral rights in this context; religious arguments for and against abortion; analysis of the relationships between race, class, and gender, as these things interact with access to reproductive healthcare in the United States.

 

PHIL 3710 ETHICS [3]

Prof. Brewer – TMB2N                                  Monday & Wednesday 2:00-3:15                   `           Cabell 332                       

In this course, we will engage in an in-depth study of the ethical thought of Plato, Aristotle, Hume and Kant—four figures who continue to have an extremely powerful influence on contemporary philosophical discussions of ethics. The main themes of the course will include: the nature of practical thinking, the place of particular and general judgments in practical deliberation, the nature and value of the virtues of character, and the source and content of the idea of right action.

 

PHIL 3720 CONTEMPORARY ETHICS [3]

Prof. Stangl – RLS5EF                                               Tuesday & Thursday 3:30-4:45                      Cabell 338

In this course, we will consider some of the liveliest topics of debate in contemporary ethical theory. Among the questions that may be considered are: Are there moral facts, and if so what sorts of facts are they, how do we come to know them, and how do we explain their authority? What would it mean to say that a life “has meaning” and what might entitle us to say such a thing? Can we make sense of prohibitions to perform certain kinds of actions even when doing so would reduce the overall incidence of that very kind of action? Do contemporary conceptions of our moral obligations leave us sufficient space to be true to our own ideals and loves? Are we responsible for bad outcomes that we knowingly choose not to prevent others from bringing about? Can we be held responsible for unchosen elements of our own character? Are there “morally tragic” cases in which we will do wrong no matter what we choose to do?

 

PHIL 3800 FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY [3]

Prof. Payton – MRT4RJ                                 Tuesday & Thursday 8:00-9:15

In this class, we’ll look at ways in which issues of gender can interact with traditional philosophical topics. We’ll discuss gendered dimensions to our understanding of some central issues in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and social and political philosophy. 

 

PHIL 4020 SEMINAR FOR MAJORS: HOW TO CONFRONT WRONGDOING [3]

Prof. Stangl – RLS5EF                                   Tuesday & Thursday 12:30-1:45                   

Wrongdoing, both on a personal and societal scale, elicits strong and varied responses: indignation, anger, a desire for repair, hopelessness, and forgiveness, among others.  Which of these responses are justified?  Which are likely to be useful?  Which are virtuous?  These questions have not only long interested philosophers, they are also of deep existential significance.  This course will look at recent philosophical work that attempts to grapple with this issue. 

 

PHIL 7559 NIETZSCHE [3]

Department Permission Required

Prof. Langsam - HLL6Y                     Wednesday 1:00-3:30                                     Cocke 108

In the first part of the course, we will read selections from a variety of Nietzsche’s works, including The Birth of Tragedy, Untimely Meditations, Daybreak, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, and Twilight of the Idols. In the second part of the course, we will read some secondary literature on Nietzsche, including Reginster’s influential book, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (2006).

 

PHIL 7540

ETHICS FOR CHANGING SELVES: TRANSFORMATIONS, ASPIRATIONS, AND GROWTH [3]

Department Permission Required

Prof. Brewer – TMB2N                      Tuesday 1:00-3:30                                          Cocke 108

In this course, we will take an in-depth look at perplexities of practical thought associated with personal transformation and growth.  There is a burgeoning philosophical literature on this topic, much of it written in the last 20 years, and we will be examining some of the more interesting and/or influential contributions to this literature.  Among the topics likely to be considered are: transformative experiences and practical rationality, epiphanies and their ethical significance, conceptual innovation and its effects on practical understanding, the threat of value capture, and the nature and sources of ethical maturation and growth.

 

PHIL 7570 SPONTANEITY [3]

Department Permission Required

Prof. Irving – ZCI7C                         Tuesday 3:30-6:00                                          Cocke 108
This seminar is loosely structured around my two books-in-progress. The Wandering Mind explores the nature, agential role, and value of attention and distraction, whereas The Spontaneity Deficit asks whether digital distractions undermine the good mental life. Rather than read these whole books, we will pair select chapters with secondary literature. These readings and chapters do not fit cleanly into a single discipline, but rather explore broader systematic concerns that arise in multiple literatures, including philosophy of mind, action, moral psychology, and technology studies. Here is a description of the books:

 

The Wandering Mind: William James once said that “the natural tendency of attention when left to itself is to wander to ever new things. He was right. Mind-wandering is pervasive, occupying up to half of our waking thoughts. Yet for centuries, scientists and philosophers largely ignored attention’s “natural tendency to wander”. Although 21st century scientists suddenly began to publish thousands of articles on mind-wandering, this flurry of progress was not tethered to philosophical foundations. Cognitive scientists gathered a vast amount of data on mind-wandering without pausing to ask foundational questions: What is mind-wandering? Is mind-wandering something that happens to us or something we do? Is mind-wandering valuable? In The Wandering Mind, I aim to answer these questions, developing the most extensive philosophical theory of mind-wandering to date. Just as importantly, mind-wandering gives us a novel lens on the mind. To account for mind-wandering, we must revise our taxonomies of attention and mental action, and our view of the mental good life.

 

The Spontaneity Deficit brings those abstract questions about the mental good life to bear on an urgent, concrete problem: digital distraction. Notifications, emails, Twitter posts, Google Ads, texts, Venmo requests: such technologies are designed to place historically unprecedented demands on attention. Scholars have widely discussed one problem: digital distractions make us less attentive. The Spontaneity Deficit will identify another problem, which has been neglected in the literature. Digital technologies not only make us more distracted; they also change how we are distracted. Specifically, they crowd out spontaneous forms of distraction such as mind-wandering, which support creativity and exploration. Digital distractions replace mind-wandering with a form of hyper-salient distraction, akin to a technological form of obsessive rumination.

 

PHIL 8560 THE REPUBLIC AND ITS AFTERLIFE [3]

Department Permission Required

Prof. McCready-Flora – ICM5H & Prof. Adams -NA9FW  Thursday 1:00-3:30                             Cocke 108

This seminar has two related tasks. The first is a close reading of Plato’s Republic, aided by selections from the scholarly literature on its interpretation and aimed at philosophical understanding of its argument, structure and the plausibility of its conclusions. The second is an inquiry into issues of contemporary import raised by Plato’s text, conducted via both classic and cutting-edge readings in political and social philosophy. Such issues may include: the nature and ethics of propaganda and misinformation; censorship and its putative justifications; liberalism versus perfectionism as grounds for state authority and action; public health and, more generally, the social role of experts; the nature, scope and purpose of public education; individual rights; paternalism and state action; legitimacy and the grounds of authority; public service and its discontents.

 

PHIL 9700 DISSERTATION SEMINAR [3]

Department Permission Required

Prof. MacKenzie – DFS8ZY              Monday 1:00-3:30                                           Cocke 108

This non-credit course is taught every spring. It combines discussions of the central aspects of professional life with multiple opportunities for students to present and receive peer feedback on their work-in-progress.  It is mandatory for all third-year students in residence, and optional for others.