SCHEDULE
Note: This syllabus is intended to give the student guidance in what may be covered during the semester and will be followed as closely as possible. However, the professor reserves the right to modify, supplement and make changes as the course needs arise.
WEEK 1: Introduction
Monday, 9/2: Introduction to Course
Wednesday, 9/4: Doing Philosophy
Required Reading: (1) “Preface” (Textbook) and Bertrand Russell, “The Value of Philosophy” (Textbook)
Recommended Reading: “Logical Toolkit” (Textbook)
I. THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF MORAL OBLIGATION
WEEK 2: Normative Theory: Consequentialism
Monday, 9/9: Famine and Moral Obligation
Required Reading: Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (Textbook)
Wednesday, 9/11: A Consequentialist Theory
Required Reading: John Stuart Mill, “Utilitarianism” (Textbook)
WEEK 3: Normative Theory: Pressures on and Alternatives to Consequentialism
Monday, 9/16: Famine and Moral Obligation
Required Reading: Onora O'Neill, "Kantian Approaches to Some Famine Problems" (Textbook)
Wednesday, 9/18: Pressures on Consequentialism
Required Reading: Robert Nozick, "The Experience Machine" (see Moodle)
WEEK 4: Normative Theory: Kantian Ethics & Wrapping-up of Unit on Ethics
Monday, 9/23: A Deontological Theory
Required reading: Immanuel Kant, "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" (Textbook)
Wednesday, 9/25: A Deontological Theory
Required Reading: Immanuel Kant, "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" (Textbook)
II. EPISTEMOLOGY
WEEK 5: Knowledge and Reality
Monday, 9/30: Knowledge
Required reading: Plato, “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” (Textbook)
Wednesday, 10/2: Knowledge and Reality
Required reading: René Descartes, "Meditations on First Philosophy" (Textbook)
WEEK 6: Knowledge and Skepticism
Monday, 10/7: Knowledge and Skepticism
Required reading: Christopher Grau, "Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and The Matrix" (Textbook)
Wednesday, 10/9: What We Can Know
Required reading: [To be announced]
First writing assignment topics distributed
WEEK 7: Knowledge, Wrapping-up
Monday, 10/14: Knowledge
Required reading: [To be announced.]
Wednesday, 10/16: How to write a philosophy paper & Using the library
Required reading: “Writing Philosophy Papers” (Textbook); Handout on writing philosophy papers
III. GOD AND EVIL
WEEK 8: The Problem of Evil: An Argument Against the Existence of God
Monday, 10/21: Paper 1 Workshop
Required reading: Bring paper draft to class and be prepared to discuss it! Hume, “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” excerpt (Textbook)
Wednesday, 10/23:
Required reading: William L. Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” (Textbook)
First writing assignment due: Friday, 10/25 at midnight
WEEK 9: Arguments for the Existence of God
Monday, 10/28: Response to the Problem of Evil
Required Reading: Marilyn McCord Adams, “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God” (Textbook)
Wednesday, 10/30: First-Cause Argument for the Existence of God
Required Reading: Aquinas, “The Existence of God” (Textbook)
WEEK 10: Arguments for the Existence of God
Monday, 11/4: Argument from Design
Required Reading: William Paley “Natural Theology” (Textbook)
Wednesday, 11/6: How to write a philosophy paper & Using the library
Required reading:
WEEK 11: Arguments for the Existence of God & Writing a Philosophy Paper
Monday, 11/11: First-Paper Workshop
Required assignment: Bring paper draft to class and be prepared to discuss it!
Wednesday, 11/13:Monday, 10/30: Various Arguments
Required Reading: (1) Blaise Pascal, “The Wager” (Textbook) and (2) [Second reading to be announced]
IV. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
WEEK 12: The Traditional Problem of Mind and Body
Monday, 11/18:
Required reading: Bertrand Russell, “The Argument from Analogy for Other Minds” (Textbook)
Wednesday, 11/20:
Required reading: Gilbert Ryle, “Descartes’s Myth” (Textbook)
WEEK 13: The Nature of Mind
Monday, 11/25: Materialist, Scientific View of Mind
Required reading: David M. Armstrong, “The Nature of Mind”
Wednesday, 11/27: Eliminative Materialism & Pressures on Physicalism
Required readings: Patricia Churchland, “Neurophilosophy” (Textbook); Recommended reading: Paul Churchland, “Eliminative Materialism”; Frank Jackson, “What Mary Didn’t Know” (Textbook)
Second writing assignment topics distributed
WEEK 14: Course Overview and Review
Monday, 12/2:
Overview of course, Final exam review
Wednesday, 12/4
Presentation of Reflection Papers: Bring to class!