Spring 2008 Course Descriptions
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PHIL 2300-001  (LL – B) Beginning Philosophy
SCALA
We will survey a selection of mainstream philosophical questions, including skepticism and knowledge, the relation between minds and bodies, personal identity, the existence of God, and others.  The goal of this course is to familiarize beginning students in philosophy with the results and methods of philosophical inquiry.  No previous experience with philosophy is supposed.


PHIL 2300-002  (LL – A) Beginning Philosophy
RIBEIRO
This course is an introduction to some central philosophical questions: what makes a self; how we acquire and justify knowledge; what is the difference between the mind and the brain; how do we know if we have free will; what is the moral way to conduct our lives and how do we know it; whether one is justified in believing in a deity, and what constitutes a meaningful life. Readings will be both historical and contemporary.


PHIL 2300-003   Beginning Philosophy
SCALA
We will survey a selection of mainstream philosophical questions, including skepticism and knowledge, the relation between minds and bodies, personal identity, the existence of God, and others.  The goal of this course is to familiarize beginning students in philosophy with the results and methods of philosophical inquiry.  No previous experience with philosophy is supposed.


PHIL 2310-001 (LL-A)   Logic
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 2310-002 (LL-B)   Logic
KIM                       
Development of formal methods for evaluating deductive reasoning.  Additional topics may include uses of language, definition, and nondeductive inference.


PHIL 2310-003   Logic
SHARP   
Development of formal methods for evaluating deductive reasoning.  Additional topics may include uses of language, definition, and nondeductive inference.


PHIL 2320-001 (LL-A)  Intro to Ethics 
CURZER
Discussion of problems and theories of morality.  Includes the application of philosophical techniques to issues of contemporary moral concern.  

PHIL 2320-003   Intro to Ethics
GARRO
Discussion of problems and theories of morality.  Includes the application of philosophical techniques to issues of contemporary moral concern.  

PHIL 3302-001  Asian Philosophy
WEBB
Until recently, philosophy has been pursued in Asia quite independently of philosophy as pursued in the West.  We will be examining major movements in Asian philosophy from three parts of Asia:  India, China, and Japan.  We will start with dualistic and non-dualistic forms of Hindu philosophy, or Vendanta.  We will then move on to Buddhism, covering Theravada Buddhism, and then the various Mahayana traditions as they evolved in China.  This course satisfies the multicultural requirement.

The second main division of the course will cover the native traditions of China, including Confucianism and Taoism, as well as some of the movements that arose as responses to these.  The third major division of the course will take us to Japan, covering the different forms Zen Buddhism took there.  Recurring themes will be the nature of ultimate reality, the difference between appearance and reality, the idea of the good life, the requirements for good government, and the role of reason in human life. This course satisfies the multicultural requirement.


PHIL3303-001 Modern European Philosophy
DIPOPPA
This class will offer an overview of the development of philosophical and scientific ideas between early 1600 and late 1700. We will begin with Galileo and Bacon and end with Kant, looking at philosophical texts against their historical background. Philosophers covered:  Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz and others


PHIL 3322-001  Biomedical Ethics
DIPOPPA
Discussion of conceptual and moral problems surrounding such issues as abortion, euthanasia, genetic research, behavior control, allocation of medical resources, health, and disease.


PHIL 3340-001  Minds, Brains, and Computers
KIM
This course is a survey of central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind with emphasis on recent advances in philosophy and cognitive sciences.  We will begin by looking at different accounts of the nature of mind: behaviorism, the mind-body identity theory, and functionalism.  We will then ask how the mental causally interacts with the physical, whether the mental is reducible to the physical (say, brain activities), and how much our thoughts and experiences depend on the nature of our environments.  Finally, we will think about the nature of conscious experience:  Can we account for the fact that we are more than mere zombies? 


PHIL 4301/5301-001   Seminar in Ancient Philosophy
CURZER
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as Responses to Plato:  We will read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics throughout the semester. At points where Aristotle is responding to the claims of Socrates and Plato, we will read the relevant Socratic and Platonic dialogs. We will marvel at how Plato is Socrates’ best student while Aristotle is Plato’s worst student. Or is it the other way around?
    Texts:     Aristotle:  Nicomachean Ethics
                    Bostock:  Aristotle’s Ethics
                    Plato:  Laches, Lysis, Charmendes, Meno, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Philebus
                    Irwin:  Plato’s Ethics  ??????


PHIL 4331-001  Philosophy of Language
HOM
How does language relate to the world?  How do we manage to use words to talk about things?  What is the relationship between the words we use and the thoughts that they express?  These are the central questions for this course.  Along the way, we will explore the concepts of meaning, truth, and belief.  We will begin by investigating the work of Frege and Russell on the meaning of proper names.  According to them, the relationship between a name and the object it picks out is mediated by descriptive information.  Their theories will be contrasted with ‘direct reference’ theories of names, where the semantic relationship between a name and its bearer is unmediated by descriptive information.  The differences between these two competing approaches will be brought out in our discussion of propositions and belief reports.  We will go on to examine further implications of direct reference theories for meaning and thought.  Other related topics in the course include: truth and meaning, the role of contemporary linguistics, pragmatics and context, metaphor, and epithets.


PHIL 4340-001   Metaphysics
HOM
People ordinarily say things like:

(1)    Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
(2)    Amy and Beth wore the same dress yesterday.
(3)    Gore could have won the election.
(4)    Shaq is bald.

On the surface, it seems that we know exactly what they are saying.  But upon further reflection, complexities arise.  For example, who are we talking about in (1)?  If we are talking about someone, then (1) is false.  If we are talking about no one, then how can we be saying anything?  Either way, explaining the truth of (1) requires further inquiry.  Consider sentence (2).  They obviously did not literally step into the exact, same garment, so what do we mean?  What is it for distinct objects to stand in the relation of being the same dress?  How do we assess the truth of (3)?  Gore didn’t actually win the election, but what is force of the claim that he could have won?  And finally, does (4) commit us to saying that Shaq’s scalp is completely hairless?  What if it had one hair on it?  Presumably one additional hair could not make a difference to his being bald.  But what about two additional hairs?  Or three?  Or…?  Although there are clear cases
(hairless and ‘Afro’), there is no sharp delineation of the intermediary cases for when he goes from bald to non-bald.  What then are we to say about the truth of (4) in the intermediary cases?  In investigating the topics of existence, identity, fiction, modality, universals, and vagueness, we shall develop a fuller grasp of the complexities mentioned above, and inquire into a range of explanations for these seemingly mundane issues about the world.


PHIL 5301/4301-001  Studies in Greek Philosophy
CURZER
See description for 4301 above.


PHIL 5308-001  Topics In Aesthetics: Theories Of Beauty
RIBEIRO
We will cover theories of beauty from Plato to the present, including some contemporary readings in cognitive science. Topics covered will include how beauty is an aesthetic property and how it relates to other aesthetic properties; aesthetic supervenience; beauty and aesthetic value; beauty and artistic value; and varieties of beauty.


PHIL 5314-001  Contemporary Aesthetics
NATHAN
This course will be an intensive introduction to the philosophy of art as it has developed in the last fifty years.  Contemporary philosophers have focused on analyzing the basic concepts and principles found in art history and criticism but also on commonplace notions used by ordinary folks in thinking and speaking about works of art.  We will look at the possibility of defining art, the nature of artistic expression, the relation between artistic intention and interpretation, the difference between critical and performance interpretation, and the nature of aesthetic and artistic value.


PHIL 5340-001  Seminar In Metaphysics
SCALA
Our topic is theories of modality, or philosophical accounts of possibility and necessity.  These notions have uses both in ordinary discourse and in many philosophical settings.  We will familiarize ourselves with the latter uses and with the challenge of providing a systematic philosophical account of modality.  Among those we will study is the possible worlds account (according to which, P is necessarily true if and only if P is true at all possible worlds), combinatorialism (P is necessarily true if and only if P is true in all rearrangements of the actual world), and fictionalism (P is necessarily true if and only if the fiction of worlds says that P is true in all worlds).