A survey of principal topics and problems in areas such as ethics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of religion. 

A survey of principal topics and problems in areas such as ethics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of religion. 

An introduction to the philosophical achievements of the ancient world, concentrating on Plato and Aristotle. 

Theories of human nature, such as those of Plato, Christianity, Marxism, and existentialism. Modern phsychological and biological theories are included, as the interplay of nature and nurture in determining human conduct is explored. 

This course examines the relationship of the mind to the body. Topics covered include whether a machine could think, the Turing Test for intelligence, the reduction of the mind to the brain, whether consciousness can be captured materialistically, and the nature of persons and personal identity.We'll be thinking about immaterial spirits, futuristic computers and robots, Martians who behave like us but who have an internal structure very different from ours, brains in vats. We will consider whether these strange characters have thoughts and feelings. The point is not to consider bizarre cases just for the sake of it, but to see what light we can shed on our own nature as beings with mental lives.

An introduction to ethics by way of an examination of a number of contemporary moral problems, including problems of abortion, sexual morality, capital punishment, pornography and hate speech.

An introduction to ethics by way of an examination of a number of contemporary moral problems, including problems of abortion, sexual morality, capital punishment, pornography and hate speech.

An introduction to ethics by way of an examination of a number of contemporary moral problems, including problems of abortion, sexual morality, capital punishment, pornography and hate speech.

This course investigates four different attitudes that have been held about the relation of humans to God. First is an ancient view according to which God's existence is presupposed and all events are interpreted as expressions of God's will. Second is a medieval view according to which the existence of God and his various attributes are suitable subjects for proof and argument. Third is a modern view according to which God exists but little is known about him through reasoning. Fourth is a contemporary view according to which God is assumed not to exist, and it is asked whether anything has any value and whether human life has a meaning. Although the course is divided historically, our goal will be to identify what is true or false, rational or not rational about the views expressed in each.

This is a course in the basic principles of logic. The student will come out of this course with an understanding of deductive inference and of argument generally, as wells as the notions of logical consequence, validity, soundness, and logical truth. Specifically, we will be looking at sentential logic (which treats the inferential relations among simple sentences) and predicate logic. Predicate logic is distinguished from sentential logic by its use of quantifiers.

This is a course in the basic principles of logic. The student will come out of this course with an understanding of deductive inference and of argument generally, as wells as the notions of logical consequence, validity, soundness, and logical truth. Specifically, we will be looking at sentential logic (which treats the inferential relations among simple sentences) and predicate logic. Predicate logic is distinguished from sentential logic by its use of quantifiers.

This is a first course in deductive symbolic logic. We'll study formal languages for representing sentences in logically precise ways, we'll study algorithms for evaluating arguments as logically valid or invalid, and we'll get an introduction to some of the surprising discoveries logicians have made about what tasks no algorithm can possibly do.

This is a first course in deductive symbolic logic. We'll study formal languages for representing sentences
in logically precise ways, we'll study algorithms for evaluating arguments as logically valid or invalid, and
we'll get an introduction to some of the surprising discoveries logicians have made about what tasks no
algorithm can possibly do.

This course is an introduction to philosophical issues raised by film as an art form. Topics treated will include a selection from: (1) the aesthetics of cinema as a medium; (2) relation of film to other art forms, especially the differences between film and theater; (3) cinematic judgments and mass audiences; (4) the auteur theory; (5) film, art, and documentation (the relation between fiction and non-fiction); (6) the ethics of film making and cinematic depiction; (7) eroticism, obscenity, and pornography in film; and (8) the problem of censorship. Throughout the emphasis will be on addressing philosophical issues concerned with the representation, pleasure, valuation, emotion, exploitation, and liberty. Most readings will be from philosophical writing on film with use made of film theory and criticism as needed.

This course will examine the relationship between philosophy and literature, emphasizing both philosophical theories about literature and the way that philosophical ideas are conveyed through literature and literary form and devices.  Some of the topics to be considered include: distinctive characteristics of literary texts; the line between the fictional and the non-fictional; whether fictional literature can convey truth and, if so, how; the ontological status of fictional worlds and characters; the “problem of fiction” (why we care about characters we know to be fictional); the impact of literature on emotion and its relevance to evaluating literature; literary means of positioning the reader; literature in relation to moral education; the (alleged) intentional fallacy; the pleasures of tragedy; aesthetic and moral evaluation of literature;  the nature of genre; the genres of philosophical texts; and indirect communication.

This course will examine the growth and development of science in modern times
through the history of certain crucial debates and breakthroughs that have taken place
since the beginnings of modern science in the 17th century. Topics considered will
include: what is the nature of science? Does it have a distinctive method (or methods)
that distinguish it from other forms of inquiry? What are its criteria of truth? Can science
ever achieve certainty, and if not, does it have any distinctive claims on our belief, and if
so why? What are the mechanisms of scientific progress and change? How does science
relate to, and differ from, other forms of intellectual inquiry?

Classic issues in the philosophy of art and beauty, illustrated from the fine arts and contemporary media: literature, drama, music, painting, film, and television. 

Classic issues in the philosophy of art and beauty, illustrated from the fine arts and contemporary media: literature, drama, music, painting, film, and television. 

What sort of life should I live? What kind of person should I be? What sort of actions am I obligated to perform? Such questions are in the province of ethics. They ask not how you have lived, or who you are, or what you have done, but how you ought to live, what sort of person you should be, and what actions you are obligated to perform. Normative (or ethical) theory—the topic of this course—attempts to provide systematic answers to these questions. You may be wondering why we need such theories when the answers may initially seem obvious. Perhaps you feel as though you should bring about as much happiness for yourself as possible even if it means ignoring the happiness of others. But this would be to neglect the very things that make one happy; namely, friendship and other valuable relationships that require for their existence and maintenance caring about others and their interests, as well as acting on their behalf even when it is difficult or inconvenient to do so. Thus, in ethics we often find that what looks like an easy question to answer, raises puzzles instead. Normative theorists set out to resolve these puzzles. They also offer comprehensive ethical theories that, when applied to specific cases, specify a verdict about what one ought to do in that situation. In this course, we will critically evaluate competing theories, as well as asking questions about the nature of ethics itself.

What is knowledge? What are the principal types of knowledge, and what does a person's knowing a claim or proposition p amount to? Philosophers have commonly supposed that a person's having justification, or warrant, for believing that p is a necessary condition of his/her knowing that p. Accordingly, this course will be concerned with theories of justification as well as of knowledge, along with the question of whether there can be knowledge without what is called epistemic justification. Views in ancient, early modern, and contemporary philosophy—also one Eastern view—will be surveyed.

What is a mind? How does it relate to a person's brain? How does it relate to their body and the external world? Could a robot or a computer be conscious? What is it to experience a pain? How does the mental fit into the physical universe? Philosophical thinking about the mind has been focused on questions like these for hundreds of years.

In this class we will consider some of the most important historical answers offered to the questions above as well as the views of many contemporary philosophers of mind. Specifically, we'll look at theories like dualism, the identity theory, functionalism, and others. The goal is for each student to be able to articulate the basic issues examined, to describe several possible responses to those issues, and to evaluate those positions critically. This course requires active participation, including reading assigned material before each class meeting and participation in class discussions.

The objectives are:
(i) To raise the student's understanding of the complex nature and historical background of issues in the philosophy of mind, and
(ii) To develop critical thinking and enable students to communicate in an intelligent manner on these issues.

This is a course on environmental philosophy with a focus on environmental ethics but also treating epistemological issues. Much of the course will be a survey of major problem areas including intrinsic and instrumental value of environmental features, decision analysis, animal rights, biodiversity, restoration, sustainability, environmental justice, and climate change. The emphasis will be on using locally pertinent case studies to analyze philosophical problems arising from environmental concerns.

The application of ethical theory to medical practice is an important part of modern public
policy. We look at several approaches to ethics and several areas of medicine to gain insights
into medical ethics. This course carries the ethics and leadership flag. Consequently, a
substantial portion of the grade will involve ethical issues and reasoning.

This course is an introduction to ancient Greek philosophy. We’ll focus on three major thinkers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; and we’ll examine their views and arguments on some central questions about human conduct, the natural world, and our knowledge of both. We’ll begin with a brief look at some influential earlier figures known as Presocratics and Sophists, and we’ll end with a brief look at some enduring ideas of Epicurus. The emphasis throughout will be on analyzing both what these thinkers say and their reasons for saying it. The main goal is not to memorize information but to develop a critical understanding of some problems and arguments that remain very much alive today.

This course is an introduction to early modern philosophy. The objectives of the class are to identify and analyze arguments in philosophical texts of the early modern period, and to become familiar with central themes and problems. Topics include causation, substance, and the possibility of knowledge, which will be discussed with reference to contemporary scientific developments.  Readings from Descartes and other rationalists, Locke, Hume, and Kant.

PHL 332 Philosophy of Language

Aims

The course will introduce you to the history of the subject from the late nineteenth century. Central topics are: meaning, sense and reference (proper names, definite descriptions); propositional attitudes and their attribution (belief, desire etc), and the pragmatics of language use (speaker meaning, conversational implicature, the nature of discourse). We will go slowly and carefully.

Background

What is a language? A rough initial answer is that it is a system of signs with meaning. But what is meaning? Asked the meaning of “dog”, for example, a natural first answer is that it refers just to dogs. This kind of answer would have appealed to one of our earliest authors, John Stuart Mill, but was argued to be unacceptable by the Garman philosopher and mathematician, Gottlob Frege, whose paper “On sense and reference” (1892) is regarded by many as the foundational document of philosophy of language as it is now practiced. Much recent discussion can be roughly described as a debate between Millian and Fregean views.

The emphasis on the reference of words threatens to overlook their use. Language is not just a system of signs: it is a living, changing, flexible part of culture. Philosophers like Paul Grice, starting with a famous paper “Meaning” in 1957, argued that the source of word meaning is what people who use them mean: speaker-meaning is more basic than word-meaning. The brings language as an ongoing activity into a central position. One question is whether we can combine the insights of the Fregean tradition, which prioritizes language as a system of signs, with those from the Gricean tradition, prioritizing language as a way of making manifest what we mean.

Authors

The main authors to be studied are Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Peter Strawson, Keith Donnellan, Saul Kripke and Paul Grice. All the required reading is available electronically through PCL, so you won’t need to buy any texts.

Class style

Participation is an essential feature of this class (the classroom is round-table style). Feel free to ask questions or make comments at any point, and be prepared to be called on by name to give your take on a topic under discussion. I expect to use Squarecap as a way of registering attendance and asking you questions. This involves you paying a small fee, and having an internet enabled device (phone, tablet, or laptop).

Requirements

1. Participation: 10%
2. Peer review of another student’s draft midterm essay 10%
3. Midterm essay: 30% (due at end of Spring Break)
4. Term paper abstract: 10%
5. Term paper: 40% (due shortly after end of classes)

This course has a writing flag.

When you write your draft midterm essay, it will be reviewed by another student and also by me (your instructor) and you will receive detailed comments. The comments are for grade but the draft essay is not. You need to take the comments into account when preparing the final version of the midterm essay, which is for grade. I recommend adopting the same procedure for the term paper: let me and at least one other student see a draft and give comments, and then take these into account when preparing the final version. (This is a recommendation, but because of time constraints students will not receive grade credit for commenting on another student’s term paper draft. I hope the thought that you can help another student—and perhaps receive help in exchange—will be incentive enough!)

The heavy emphasis on written work in this course gives you the opportunity to solidify your understanding of what you have read, to gain practice in the accurate and systematic presentation of complex material, and to engage in imaginative construction and evaluation of arguments.

GOV 335M / PHL 342:

NATURAL LAW THEORY

Professor J. Budziszewski

Unique number:      38220

Class meets:               MW 1:00-2:30pm, BEN 1.122

Prof's office hours:   W 9:30am-12:45pm in MEZ 3.106

Prof’s email:              jbud@undergroundthomist.org

Prof’s office phone:  232-7229; phone does not record messages; email strongly preferred

Course website:         Canvas

Prof’s website:           The Underground Thomist, http://UndergroundThomist.org

Course policies:         See the FAQ at the “Other Things My Students May Need” section of the Teaching page at my personal website.

PREREQUISITES, FLAGS, AND FIELD

The course can be taken as either GOV 335M or PHL 342.  It carries a writing flag and fulfills part of the basic education requirement in writing.  If taken as a government course, enrollment requires six semester hours of lower-division government.  The subfield is Political Theory / Political Philosophy.

DESCRIPTION

“Natural law” refers to moral law – in particular, the fundamental moral principles that are built into the design of human nature and lie at the roots of conscience.  Natural law thinking is the spine of the Western tradition of ethical and legal thought.  The founders of the American republic also believed in the natural law -- in universal and "self-evident" principles of justice and morality which the Declaration of Independence called "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God."   For generations afterward, most Americans took the reality of natural law for granted.  Thomas Jefferson appealed to it to justify independence; Abraham Lincoln appealed to it to criticize slavery; Martin Luther King appealed to it to criticize racial discrimination. You would hardly guess any of this from the present day, because belief in natural law has come to be viewed as "politically incorrect."  Nevertheless, the tradition of natural law is experiencing a modest renaissance.

Is there really a natural law?  What difference does it make to society and politics if there is?  Is it really "natural"?  Is it really "law"?  To consider these questions, we will read a variety of influential works on natural law from the middle ages to the present.  Probably, most of your liberal arts education has implicitly rejected the whole idea, but in this course, for a change, you have an opportunity to hear the other side.

We will focus on the classical natural law tradition, not the revisionist version which was popular among the social contract writers.  The first two units of the course focus on the ethical and legal thought of the most important and influential classical natural law thinker in history, Thomas Aquinas.  He is a difficult writer, but we will work through his Treatise on Law carefully and I will provide lots of help.  In the final unit, which is about the continuing influence of the classical natural law tradition, we will read a number of authors including Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John McLean, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, C.S. Lewis, a contemporary theologian, and two contemporary philosophers.

GRADING POLICY

Unit 1, Foundations of Law:  Analytical outline (25%).

Unit 2, Natural and Human Law:  Take-home essay (25%).

Unit 3, Legacy of the Classical Natural Law Tradition:  Whole-course journal (25%).

Class participation (25%).

Absences also affect your grade.  Please read the attendance policy in the Frequently Asked Questions section of my personal scholarly website.

I do not use plusses and minuses.

TEXTS

Even if you prefer to use the PCL Reserve Room or read online, you must bring physical copies of the readings to class, even if only photocopies or printouts.  Electronic devices such as laptops, cellphones, sound recorders, and smart pens must be powered down and stowed away during class.  There are no exceptions except for pacemakers.

Required:

J. Budziszewski, Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law (Cambridge, 2014).  This is a paperback.

Additional shorter readings, which will be made available on Canvas or online.

Recommended:

J. Budziszewski, Companion to the Commentary (Cambridge, 2014).  This free electronic book will be available through Canvas, and it is also available at my personal website.

The nature and purpose of art and the aesthetic experience. Key theories of aesthetics both in the history of Western aesthetics and in Eastern traditions. 

This course will examine fundamental questions about the nature, authority, and proper application of law. We will begin by considering the purpose and the authority of a legal system. What function is the law to fill? What does the ideal of the Rule of Law demand, and what is the role of a constitution in securing that ideal? Must laws meet certain moral criteria in order to carry genuine authority?

The second and third units will concentrate on questions concerning the application of law in the judicial system. Unit 2 will focus on judicial review – specifically, the methods by which courts should interpret the law and reason about the law in order to resolve disputes concerning law’s proper application in particular cases. What constitutes inappropriate judicial “activism?” What constitutes inappropriate passivism? We will consider several competing theories, such as those that urge adherence to lawmakers’ original intent, to text, to moral principles, popular will, and precedent.

Finally, Unit 3 will focus on juries. What, properly, is their role in the administration of justice? What are the reasons for having juries (as opposed to judges or other government officials) reach verdicts and determine sentences? How should juries be constituted? Is jury nullification ever a justifiable practice?

Tentative:

Grades will be determined on the basis of three exams, a paper, and a few brief written homework assignments.

Readings will be taken from:

Jeffrey Abramson, We the Jury

Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation

Possibly: John Arthur & William H. Shaw, Readings in the Philosophy of Law, 5th edition 

Possibly: a few additional readings, either in a course packet, posted as pdfs, or available online

Topic courses focusing on philosophy in a particular context.

Mass disparities exist in the health of humans across the globe. It may seem obvious from a moral point of view that if we can do something to alleviate the global and local disparities in health and access to healthcare, that we should do something about it. Once we scratch the surface of this apparent truism, however, we find a number of assumptions in need of defense. What would ground such an obligation after all? Do humans have a right to health? If so, do they also have a right to healthcare? It may seem that these two concepts are intertwined, but consider an analogy. Someone’s right to life makes it impermissible to kill that person (unless you would be justified in doing so, say, in a case of genuine self-defense). Nevertheless, the right to life plausibly does not entail that you are obligated to protect or preserve the life of everyone who has such a right. Similarly, if humans have a right to health, then it would be impermissible to undermine their health. But it is a different question whether individual’s are obligated to protect and preserve the health of others by, for example, ensuring their access to healthcare. The course will evaluate rights-based arguments, among others, that aim to show the injustice of current disparities in health. Proponents contend that we do have a moral obligation to secure health and access to healthcare across racial, gender, socio-economic, as well as national boundaries.

“Existentialism” was hardly a philosophical movement in the traditional sense, for few of its major figures would have described themselves as existentialists.  And yet the existentialists do represent a movement in the sense that they sharing certain concerns, such as emphasis on how reflective thought relates to our actual lives, skepticism regarding reason, reevaluation of traditional approaches to ethics, and insistence on passionate engagement as essential for a meaningful life. Among the figures we will consider are Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Description:

According to a view of the world that we find obvious, there are material things such as tables or electrons or planets.  In addition, there are linguistic expressions that have semantic properties such as being true or false, and individual words that stand for things or properties or logical operations.  Relatedly, there are brains and minds, and mental states such as beliefs can also be true or false.  In this course we will consider how semantic or meaning properties of words or perhaps neural states are related to the sorts of properties that science and sensory perception reveals.  In the background of our thinking will be views that all 'legitimate' or 'real' properties or things are of a sort that are discoverable by science, or that are  'reducible' to such properties or things or facts.  We will critically examine a variety of views about how meaning is related to the world of perception and science, consider objections, and see whether we can find any new ways to illuminate how words and brain states are related to facts and things.

We will read papers or chapters from books by Roy Harris, Wittgenstein, Fodor, Stich, Putnam, Kripke, Quine, Ebbs, Davidson, Millikan, Neander, and others.

Two short (3-5pp) papers and a longer (8-10pp) paper will count for 90% of the grade.

10% of the grade will result from class participation and discussion.

Description:

The seminar will be a study of theories of the emotions in modern philosophy.  The first half of the seminar will examine the historically important theories of Rene Descartes, David Hume, William James, and Sigmund Freud.  The second half will examine the leading contemporary theories of Antonio Damasio, Martha Nussbaum, and Peter Goldie.   

Texts:

Descartes, The Passions of the Soul

Hume, selections from A Treatise of Human Nature

James, "What is an Emotion?"

Freud, "The Unconscious"

Damasio, Descartes' Error

Nussbaum, selections from Upheavals of Thought

Goldie, The Emotions

Grading:

The grade will be based on evaluation of the papers written for the seminar and participation in seminar discussion. 

A continuation of Philosophy 610QA, this course will carry the class discussion beyond ethics to the support for ethics—reality and our ability to know it.  In this we are following Plato’s journey from Socrates’ questions to a theory of transcendent being.  We will start by looking at recent theories of relativism and then ask whether we can have access to knowledge of objective truth.  We’ll look at Plato’s Theaetetus and ask whether relativism can be coherent, and we’ll go on to seek a definition of knowledge.  In the middle of February, in time for Valentine’s day, we will arrive at the subject of love, which Plato believes leads us to a grasp of reality, as we will learn from the Symposium.  After a foray into the history of skepticism, we will leap forward to the modern era, where we join the debate between the advocates of reason (such as Descartes) and the team of passion and experience (Hume).   We will see how these two sides handle proofs for the existence of God (with a brief look back into the middle ages). After that, we leap forward again to discuss contemporary issues about the mind and brain, then advance to a serious excursion into Buddhist metaphysics, which centers on the challenging idea that a human being has no real self. 

This course examines some of the central problems of philosophy, drawing on both contemporary readings and historical texts. Students will be introduced to philosophy’s “tool kit” as well as to some of its “greatest hits.” Topics include: History of philosophy (Descartes’s Mediations), metaphysics (including, for example, time travel), and some issues in the theory of knowledge (including the question whether we know we are not living in a computer simulation), and issues in applied ethics (for example, “Is there a moral right to own a gun?”, “What are the reasonable limits on free speech?”). There are no prerequisites for this class.

There are some questions we should all ask ourselves at least once before we die, and many of them are philosophical. In this course we will pick out a few of the most pressing of these questions, and try to answer them as best we can. In the spring semester we will ask questions about valuation — good and bad, right and wrong. Among them will be: What is it about right actions that makes them right? Is it only that they bring about the best available outcome? What is it for one outcome to be better or worse than another? What is it for one life to go better or worse than another? Could it be wrong to bring someone into existence? Do we owe anything to future generations? Are there some things that it would be wrong to say, regardless of whether they are true? Are all of us leading immoral lives? Readings will be drawn primarily from recent work in philosophical ethics, and will be made freely available on Canvas.