Undergraduate Courses
111. Contemporary Moral Issues. (PHIL 2306). (3-0). Credit 3. CD Course. Representative ethical positions and their application to contemporary social problems.
205. Technology and Human Values. (3-0). Credit 3. Interaction of personal and societal values with technology and man’s self-image, the future and value change.
208. Philosophy of Education. (3-0). Credit 3. Basic social ideas and concepts of human nature in Western civilization; their implications for theories of education.
240. Introduction to Logic (PHIL 2303). (3-0). Credit 3. Methods and principles used to distinguish between correct and incorrect reasoning; uses of language, informal and formal fallacies, Venn diagrams, truth-tables, symbolic notation, formal deductive proof, induction.
251. Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 1301). (3-0). Credit 3. Perennial problems of philosophy such as the existence of God, the mind/body relationship, the limits of knowledge, the foundations of moral judgment, man and the state.
252. Introduction to Hip-Hop Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Introduction to philosophy by way of the major themes and subjects of Hip-Hop; critical advocacy of various philosophical ideals. Cross-listed with AFST 252.
255. C.S. Lewis: Faith and Philosophy. (3.0). Credit 3. Methods and subject matter of philosophy through the writings of C.S. Lewis; includes reason, science, imagination, faith, problem of evil, atonement and ethics.
282. Ethics in a Digital Age. (3.0). Credit 3. CD Course. Exploration of the intersection between ethical and social theories, principles, and values and the interconnected digital world; examination of the interplay between these domains for topics such as cybercrime, privacy surveillance, security, intellectual property rights, artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, internet governance, computing professionalism, and cyber policy and law.
283. Latin American Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. ICD Course. Major philosophers in the history of Latin American philosophy, such as Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Vasconcelos, Caso and Gutiérrez.
285. Directed Studies. Credit 1 to 4. Directed studies in specific problem areas of philosophy. Prerequisite: Approval of department head.
289. Special Topics in… Credit 1 to 4. Selected topics in an identified area of philosophy. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.
291. Research. Credit 3. Research conducted under the direction of faculty member in the department of philosophy and humanities. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: Freshman or sophomore classification and approval of department head.
305. Philosophy of the Natural Sciences. (3-0). Credit 3. Critical analysis of scientific methods and achievements; the nature and types of explanation, discovery and confirmation, models and theories. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
307. Philosophy of the Social Sciences. (3-0). Credit 3. Nature and objectivity of the social sciences, their paradigms and patterns of explanation. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
314. Environmental Ethics. (3-0). Credit 3. Moral basis of duties to preserve or protect plants, animals and environmental systems; foundations of environmental law and policy; the idea of nature in philosophy; critique of social and economic analyses of environmental values. Prerequisite: Sophomore classification or approval of instructor.
315. Military Ethics. (3-0). Credit 3. Major ethical issues in modern military practice: ethics of leadership, just war theory, killing of the innocent and the moral status of the rules of war.
320. Philosophy of Mind. (3-0). Credit 3. Relation of mind to body, nature of thought and knowing, the free will problem, death and immortality. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
330. Philosophy of Art. (3-0). Credit 3. Theories of artistic creation and aesthetic response as exemplified in art forms such as painting, music, poetry, architecture, dance, theater, sculpture and motion pictures.
331. Philosophy of Religion. (3-0). Credit 3. Philosophical problems of Western religion such as the existence of God, the problem of evil, types of theism, rational, empirical and mystical approaches to God. Cross-listed with RELS 331.
332. Social and Political Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Metaphysical commitments and political theory, the nature and proper ends of the state, freedom, equality, authority, and justice, considering such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Dewey. Prerequisite: 3 hours of philosophy other than PHIL 240.
334. Philosophy of Law. (3-0). Credit 3. Traditional legal issues such as definitions of law, relationship between law and morality, and punishment considered from a legal perspective. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
341. Symbolic Logic. (3-0). Credit 3. Elementary symbolic logic beginning with propositional calculus and first order predicate logic, and their applications. Prerequisite: PHIL 240.
342. Symbolic Logic II. (3-0). Credit 3. Advanced topics in logic such as the theory of identity, higher order logics, logic of sets, elements of modal logic. Prerequisite: PHIL 240 or PHIL 341 or approval of instructor.
351. Theory of Knowledge. (3-0). Credit 3. Major topics in epistemology such as the problem of induction, perception theory, memory and the problem of other minds. Prerequisites: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
352. Africana Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Presentation of the seminal ideas of several influential Africana thinkers; recovery of the neglected traditions in which these thinkers locate themselves. May be taken three times for credit. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor. Cross-listed with AFST 352.
353. Radical Black Philosophies of Race and Racism. (3-0). Credit 3. Critical evaluation of white supremacy, colonialism, and the modern construction of race; examination of the historical background for contemporary theories of race. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor. Cross-listed with AFST 353.
361. Metaphysics. (3-0). Credit 3. Topics concerning the fundamental nature of reality such as what exists, the mental and the physical, universals and individuals, space and time, God. Prerequisites: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
371. Philosophy of Literature. (3-0). Credit 3. Philosophical analysis of the major recurrent themes in world literature including fate, the meaning of tragedy, death, odyssey, good and evil, time and eternity, hope and salvation; works selected from a variety of cultures and historical periods.
375. Philosophy of the Visual Media. (2-2). Credit 3. Aesthetic, ethical and epistemological issues of photography, cinema and video.
376. Philosophy, Film and Evil. (3-0). Credit 3. CD Course. Application of philosophical methods and analyses to the medium of film; survey of various depictions and treatments of evil within the genre of science fiction; investigation of depictions and treatments of evil arising from consideration of human encounters with alien others. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor. Cross-listed with FILM 376
381. Ethical Theory. (3-0). Credit 3. Values and conduct such as moral relativism, self-interest, utilitarianism, rules, nature of valuation, ethical language and argumentation. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
382. Ethics and Cybertechnology. (2-2). Credit 3. Exploration of the intersection between ethical and social theories, principles, and values and the interconnected digital world; examination of the interplay between these domains for topics such as cybercrime, privacy, security, intellectual property rights, artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, internet governance, computing professionalism, and cyber policy and law. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification.
409. Studies in Gender and Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Analysis, from a gender-studies perspective, of a single figure or concept in the history of philosophy. May be repeated 1 time for credit with a different focus. Prerequisites: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor. Cross-listed with WMST 409.
410. Classical Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Major philosophers from 600 B.C. to the end of the third century A.D. including the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic and Roman philosophy and the Neo-Platonists. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
411. Medieval Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Major philosophers from the early Christian centuries through the 14th century, emphasizing such writers as Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
412. Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Significant seventeenth-century texts in metaphysics, epistemology, moral psychology, and political philosophy; authors such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Locke. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
413. Eighteenth-Century Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Major developments in the 18th century emphasizing such philosophers as Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
414. Nineteenth Century Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Contributions of such philosophers as Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Mill and Bradley. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval by instructor.
415. American Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. The thought of philosophers such as Peirce, James, Royce, Santayana, Mead, Dewey and Whitehead. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
416. Recent British and American Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Major philosophers in contemporary Anglo-American thought such as Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Quine, Austin and Ryle. Prerequisites: PHIL 240.
417. Phenomenology. (3-0). Credit 3. Phenomenology from its nineteenth-century origins to the present; authors such as Brentano, Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Henry, Marion. Prerequisites: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
418. Existentialism. (3-0). Credit 3. Existentialism from its nineteenth-century origins to the present; philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Buber, Rosenzweig, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
419. Current Continental Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. Major thinkers concerned with “postmodern” topics in hermeneutics, poststructuralism, critical theory, deconstructionism, contemporary Marxist strategies, semiotics and feminist theory. Prerequisite: Junior classification or approval of instructor.
424. Philosophy of Language. (3-0). Credit 3. The nature of language; the various uses of language and their philosophical import; the nature of meaning, truth, reference and issues surrounding formal representations of natural languages. Prerequisite: PHIL 240 and junior or senior classification; or approval of instructor.
425. Philosophical Inquiry in Schools. (3.0) Credit 3. In-depth engagement with the theory and practice of pre-college (K-12) philosophy. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
464. Modern Jewish Thought and Philosophy. (3-0). Credit 3. An overview of modern Jewish thought and philosophy spanning Jewish European thinkers from the 18th century to the 20th century. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor. Cross-listed with RELS 464.
465. Ethics After the Holocaust. (3.0). Credit 3. Analysis of the Holocaust as a challenge to previous ethical theories; ethical theories developed in response to the Holocaust. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor.
470. Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law. (3-0). Credit 3. Key conceptions of animal welfare; approaches to animal ethics; analysis of important ideas in animal law; consideration of animal contexts such as agricultural, experimental, wild, companion and zoo animals. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification, or approval of instructor.
480. Medical Ethics. (3-0). Credit 3. Critical analysis of major ethical issues in medicine including truth-telling, confidentiality, paternalism, genetics, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and social justice in health care.
482. Ethics and Engineering. (2-2). Credit 3. CD Course. Development of techniques of moral analysis and their application to ethical problems encountered by engineers, such as professional employee rights and whistle blowing; environmental issues; ethical aspects of safety, risk and liability; conflicts of interest; emphasis on developing the capacity for independent ethical analysis of real and hypothetical cases. Prerequisite: Junior classification. Cross-listed with ENGR 482.
484. Professional Internship. Credit 1 to 6. Practical experience in an institutional or organizational setting appropriate to analysis and understanding of issues in some area of applied philosophy. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor and department head.
485. Directed Studies. Credit 1 to 6. Directed studies in specific problem areas of philosophy. Prerequisite: Approval of department head.
489. Special Topics in… Credit 1 to 4. Selected topics in an identified area of philosophy. May be repeated for credit.
491. Research. Credit 3. Research conducted under the direction of faculty member in the department of philosophy and humanities. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: Junior or senior classification and approval of dean of college.
497. Independent Honors Studies. Credit 1 to 3. Directed independent studies in specific philosophical problems. Prerequisites: Junior or senior classification either as Honors students or with overall GPR of 3.25; letter of approval from head of student’s major department.
Humanities (HUMA)
211. Hebrew Scriptures. (3-0). Credit 3. Philosophical concepts of the Hebrew Scriptures as they relate to the development of religious and ethical ideas. Cross-listed with RELS 211.
213. New Testament. (3-0). The origin and development of the religious and philosophical concepts of the New Testament. Cross-listed with RELS 213.
303. Near Eastern Religions. (3-0). Credit 3. Beliefs and practices of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam with particular attention to their philosophical presuppositions. Cross-listed with RELS 303.
304. Indian and Oriental Religions. (3-0). Credit 3. Beliefs and practices of Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto with particular attention to their philosophical presuppositions. Cross-listed with RELS 304.
321. Political Islam and Jihad. (3-0). Credit 3. Interaction between Islamic movements and politics in various Middle Eastern countries; the meaning and evolution of jihad; the role of Islam as a tool for political and social mobilization. Prerequisite: Junior or senior classification or approval of instructor. Cross-listed with RELS 321.
485. Directed Studies. Credit 1 to 6. Directed Studies in humanities. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: Approval of department head.
489. Special Topics in… Credit 1 to 4. Selected topics in an identified area of humanities. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor.