Please see Banner/Timetable for further information about sections, times, locations, and instructors. For a description of all courses in the catalog, please click the link below:

PHIL 400/624: Philosophy and Film – Eldridge

This course is devoted to conceptual questions [questions about what it makes sense to say] about the nature and value of film as a medium of art. Can films present significant new truths or offer us significant new knowledge? If so, how? And about what? How is artistic success related to fictionality (pretense), entertainment value, and the formal organization of materials in a medium? How and why do (different) works of film negotiate the demands of realism (attention to things that are given), expressivity (evincing a ‘take’ on things, via style, surface, and arrangement), and spectacle? How do we engage imaginatively, emotionally, and critically with successful works of filmic art, and do the ways in which we engage with them matter to the cognitive work they may do? The readings will include both some classical film theorists (Arnheim, Bazin, Kracauer, Munsterberg) and contemporary philosophers and film scholars (Carroll, Cavell, Bordwell, Danto, Deleuze,  Rodowick, Schatz).

PHIL 420/522: Kant’s Critique of Judgment – Stratmann

In this course, we will journey through Kant’s Critique of Judgment, a foundational work in 18th century German philosophy. This work focuses on two seemingly very different topics: (i) aesthetic judgment (judgments involving taste and beauty) and (ii) teleological judgment (judgments involving ends or purposes). Our journey will accordingly take us through Kant’s philosophy of art, beauty, biology, nature, and religion (among other areas).

PHIL 435: Intermediate Formal Logic – Moore

Metatheory of formal logic and philosophy of logic. (General Catalog Description)

PHIL 450/540: Animal Psychology in Ethics – Garthoff

In this course we explore how psychological capacities – including capacities possessed by many non-human animals – ground ethical phenomena. We begin by overviewing important animal capacities, including nutrition, behavior, perception, consciousness, thought, and reflection; in so doing we draw on work by Ned Block and Tyler Burge, perhaps the two most important figures in the philosophy of mind today. Next we use our understanding of these capacities to illuminate ethics, organizing our investigation around four topics: moral status (value-in), well-being (goodness-for), normativity (ought-to), and virtue (goodness-as). In addressing these topics we attend to both individual animals (humans included) and social interactions among animals. Along the way we read work by several of the most important ethical theorists of the past fifty years, including Philippa Foot, Barbara Herman, Christine Korsgaard, Richard Kraut, Tom Regan, and David Velleman.

PHIL 450/540: Autonomy, Dignity, and Reason – Cureton

We often invoke broad ideas of reason, rationality, reasonableness, reasons, reasoning, and related concepts in commonsense and express their apparent authority through ordinary language and social practices.  Despite what many philosophers, economists, psychologists, novelists, and others claim, the reason of everyday life is far more substantive than cold logic or calculating self-interest.  This course explores these more limited conceptions of reason but focuses on the idea that our mental power of reason includes an expansive set of governing abilities, substantive motives, and substantive principles.  The unifying idea of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that of an autonomous person who governs herself by reason in all respects.  We will examine the Kantian roots of this theory as well as apply it to moral issues concerning generosity, coercion, deception, dignity, friendship, expressing respect, education, envy, self-development, and others.

PHIL 480/573: Achievement and Significance – Palmer

The universe is incredibly vast. We humans occupy only a small speck of it, both spatially and temporally. Given this vastness, our comparatively minute existence can make our lives seem meaningless and without any real value. Against this backdrop, this seminar focuses on a cluster of issues concerning the relationship between the universe and life’s meaning. First, what is it to achieve something and can we have genuine achievements in a universe like ours? Second, in what sense, if any, do our lives have cosmic significance and is such significance required for a meaningful life? These issues are tough and deciding what to think about them is not obvious (at least not to me!). So, our aim for the class is for each of us (me included) to develop and defend answers to these questions. Given this aim, the class will be run “seminar-style”—emphasizing student involvement and discussion. I will encourage you all, through class discussion and written work, to develop your own thoughts on the material.