Course Offerings

All students please note:

As you register for courses, bear in mind that online ("OC") classes are not the same as remote-delivered lecture classes. Remote classes taught this Fall will strive to deliver the content that you would receive in a classroom. They will have components that take place in the scheduled class times, and so your availability during that time is expected for remote classes. Different instructors may use class time differently, for example with live lectures or discussion group activities. Students can expect a range in course delivery methods to meet the needs of different sized classes and learning objectives. While some instructors may record some content, others may not.

If you are in a different time zone or have ongoing internet connectivity limitations that affect your ability to be present at a remote class, please contact your instructor as soon as possible. If you have any questions about this, please contact the Undergraduate Advisor for Philosophy at philadvising@wlu.ca.

Undergraduate

Fall 2020 = (1)
Winter 2021 = (2)
Online Fall 2020 = (OF)
Online Winter 2021 = (OW)

PP110 (1, 2, OF): Values and Society

An introductory course that critically analyzes philosophical problems implicit in our moral, political and social attitudes, with a view to assisting the student in formulating reasonable responses to a diversity of current issues. It considers such questions as: Are there objective standards for value judgements or are they merely matters of subjective taste? What is morally right? How is justice related to law or custom?

PP111 (1, 2, OW): Knowledge and Reality

This course critically analyzes philosophical problems implicit in our understanding of reality and quest for knowledge, with a view to assisting the student in formulating reasonable responses to a diversity of current issues. It considers such questions as: Can we ever be certain of anything through experience, reason, or faith? Is reality ultimately material, and is the mind distinct from matter? Does God exist?

PP201 (2, OF, OW): Reasoning and Argumentation

The course provides tools for the analysis of reasoning and the construction and evaluation of arguments. Examples from newspaper articles and theoretical discussions of science and social policy will be discussed.

PP203 (2, OF): Social and Political Philosophy

Analysis and critical evaluation of key socio-political concepts: the state, civil society, power and authority, individual freedom, property, human rights, justice, democracy, liberalism, conservatism, authoritarianism versus totalitarianism. Ideas of theorists like Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Marx, Rawls and others will be discussed.

PP204 (1): Formal Logic

An introductory study of a fundamental tool of rational thought: deductive logic. The basic concepts, principles, and techniques of formal logic are studied: valid and invalid arguments, the logical structure of statements and arguments, use of a symbolic language to represent arguments and symbolic techniques to facilitate their analysis and assessment.

PP207 (2): Ethical Theories

An introduction to traditional and contemporary ethical theory. The work of thinkers such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Mill and Ross, and theories such as Naturalism, Utilitarianism, Formalism, Natural Rights and Intuitionism will typically be examined.

PP209 (OF,OW): Philosophy of Religion

A critical study, based on classical and contemporary readings, of such issues as: the basis of religious claims, the meaning of religious discourse, the relationship between faith and reason, the nature and existence of God, the nature of religious experience, the problems of evil and human destiny.

PP213 (2): Legal Philosophy

Analysis and critical evaluation of the concepts of law, rights, and related categories and problems: commands, social rules, moral rules, primary and secondary rules, sovereignty, international law, war, punishment, social justice, property. Texts of classical and contemporary authors will be closely read and analyzed in class.

PP214 (1): Philosophy of Mind

A study of the relationship between the mental and the physical, and the nature of mental phenomena such as thought, desire, sensation, consciousness, emotion and artificial intelligence. A variety of theories (dualism, materialism, functionalism, etc.), both classical and contemporary, are examined.

PP215 (1): Aesthetics

A survey of issues related to our aesthetic appreciation of works of visual art, music and other objects (the environment, architecture, etc.). Traditional and contemporary aesthetic theories will be discussed.

PP217 (OF, OW): Medical Ethics

A study of some of the fundamental social and ethical issues brought about by the biomedical revolution: behaviour control (by drugs, psychosurgery and psychotherapy), experimentation, informed consent, genetic screening and genetic control, transplantation, truth-telling, death and dying, new concepts of health and illness, allocation of scarce medical resources.

PP218 (1): Existentialism

An examination of one or more themes in existentialist thought. Topics to be investigated will include authenticity, anxiety, being and meaning.

PP219 (2): Feminist Philosophy

An introduction to a wide variety of feminist thought. This course explores the views of various feminist philosophers focussing on important debates within feminism.

PP223 (2, OF): Contemporary Moral Issues

An examination of work by contemporary philosophers on problems of normative ethics. Topics such as aboriginal rights, abortion, world poverty, capital punishment, national and international environmental issues, pornography, criminal justice and animal rights will be discussed. A variety of approaches (e.g., liberal, communitarian, utilitarian, feminist) will be considered.

PP224 (OW): Philosophy and the Environment

A study of current philosophical approaches to environmental issues. Topics may include environmental ethics, deep ecology, ecofeminism, the Green movement and radical ecology, as well as the analysis of central concepts such as domination, stakeholder analysis, sustainability, wilderness and biophilia.

PP225 (1): Theories of Knowledge

A study of belief, justification and knowledge, with consideration of such current issues as foundationalism, scepticism and relativism.

PP229 (2): Theories of Reality

An examination of such topics in metaphysics as being, existence, universals and particulars, self, mind, body, causality, freedom, necessity, purpose and value.

PP230 (OF, OW): Philosophy of War and Peace**

**Please note that this course was previously titled, "The Quest for World Peace". If you have previously taken PP230 under that title, you will not receive additional credit for this one. Please speak to the undergraduate advisor if you have questions.

This course explores issues related to the ethics of war and peace. In includes discussions of just war, ‘the duty to protect’ innocent third parties, the moral claims of combatants and non-combatants, terrorism, civil war, revolution, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, the ethics of post-war reconstruction and reconciliation (including the notion of political forgiveness), the concept of self-defence, the idea of ‘total war,’ the ethics of civil disobedience (violent and non-violent), arms races, and more. These and other issues will be explored against the background of more theoretical topics such as the limits of legitimate political authority, the problem of evil, and the problem of individual responsibility in collectives.

PP233 (1): Philosophy of Sex, Love, and Friendship

A philosophical examination of intimate human relationships. Topics covered include the nature of inter-personal desire, sexual ethics, sexual orientation, romantic and agapic love, kinds of friendships and selected concepts such as trust, betrayal, celibacy, promiscuity and perversion.

PP247 (OF, OW): Business Ethics

An examination of the ethical aspects of central features of business activity such as property rights, contracts, the profit motive, advertising and regulated trade. Reference will be made to moral concepts such as justice, welfare and responsibility, in relation to such current issues as preferential hiring, deceptive advertising, environmental destruction and consumer protection.

PP259 (2): Ancient Philosophy II

An introduction to ancient philosophy from Aristotle to Plotinus. Aristotle, Greek philosophy after Aristotle, and the relationship of Greek philosophy to earlier and later thought will be topics for discussion.

PP262 (1): Modern Philosophy I

An introduction to modern philosophy, which will discuss its beginnings in the Renaissance and its development in the 17th and 18th centuries. Discussion will focus on thinkers such as Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, Rousseau and Kant. The rise of science, modernity, the Enlightenment, empiricism, rationalism and idealism will be possible topics for discussion.

PP264 (2): Twentieth Century Philosophy

A survey of themes in 20th century philosophy, including such movements as pragmatism, logical empiricism, ordinary language philosophy, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory, deconstruction, and the bridging of the so called analytical/continental divide.

PP350P (1) - Self and World in Kant

This course will explore Kant’s critical philosophy as it was introduced in his Critique of Pure Reason. We will study Kant’s novel contributions to metaphysics and epistemology by examining theses associated with transcendental idealism and empirical realism, with a special focus on his conception of a priori knowledge of the intelligible world. Kant saw that philosophy was at an impasse because it had tried to explain our knowledge of physics by having the mind conform to that world. But, if the world had to conform to the structure of world-constituting cognition, we could put our knowledge of physics on a firm metaphysical footing.
We will see how Kant’s views are informed by the continental rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff, Newtonian physics, and Humean empiricism. But we will also see why Kant still plays such an outsized role in contemporary metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. Can there be an a priori study of the mind? Can the structure of cognition provide us with a priori knowledge of the world? These and related questions will guide our reading of Kant and his philosophical legacy.

PP370I (1): Nature, Evolution, Mind, and Cosmos

Is reality fundamentally material-physical, with consciousness, value, and purpose emerging relatively late on the scene? Is consciousness just a contingent by-product of unguided natural selection? Is life itself merely a 'happy accident' – something that might never have been if not for the fortuitous interplay of impersonal physical forces? This course will engage with a recent and important book that answers all of these questions in the negative: Thomas Nagel's Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (2012). Since the book is short, we will also be examine some background literature that will help us better understand Nagel's project.

PP380D (2): Metaethics

In this course we try to arrive at a better understanding of the curious nature of moral judgment and of the relationship between facts and values. What (if anything) is the basis for a distinction between facts and values? Are values real? Are there moral truths? Is moral knowledge possible? Are moral standards relative or absolute? How do moral judgments contribute to human motivation? We will first attempt to understand these questions, and then try to formulate tentative answers to them. Although the course emphasizes recent work on these topics, we will begin by examining some historically important responses to them.

PP380L (2) - The Value of Anger

In this course we will examine discussions about how to understand what anger is and whether or not it is a valuable or useful emotion. We will begin with an historical debate between Aristotle and the Stoic, Seneca. Aristotle thinks that anger, when experienced appropriately, is a valuable and necessary component of living an ethical life. Seneca, on the other hand, views anger as an entirely negative and destructive force. The structuring questions of the debate between Aristotle and the Stoics will then be examined in more contemporary accounts of anger. Topics for consideration will include the ethical, political, and epistemic value and disvalue of anger. Our focus will be largely, although not exclusively, on questions about the value of anger in contexts of social injustice.

PP450N (1) - Plato on Competing Goods

One of the central questions in Platonic ethics is: what constitutes a good life for a human being? Answering this question involves considering the different kinds of goods one might value and make central in one’s life. In this course, we will examine dialogues where Plato engages treatments of how best to organize one’s values when faced with competing goods. Our focus will be not only on the content of the ethical theories proposed in the dialogues, but also on the wide variety of methodological mechanisms employed in their defense as well as the styles of argumentation used by various interlocutors. Topics for consideration may include: the value of self-control versus the value of erotic madness, the value of the philosophical life versus the value of the political life of power, the value of pleasure versus knowledge in a good life, and the nature and role of love in a good human life.

PP470W (2): Ignorance and Responsibility

Some philosophers argue that none of us can truly be responsible for our actions, since free will is an illusion. But many other philosophers and most ordinary folk do believe that persons can be responsible for their actions. Which actions? Surely not all of them—if you are stronger than I, grab my arm and use it to punch out the Dean, surely I am not responsible for having knocked out the Dean. If you put arsenic in the sugar bowl and I offer it up, unknowingly, to a guest who wants to sweeten her iced tea, surely I am not responsible for poisoning my guest, even if I am causally linked to her poisoning.

In this class, “Responsibility and Ignorance,” we will think about cases like this last one—the case where I, acting in ignorance, unknowingly poison my guest. When are persons responsible, or are they ever responsible, when they act in ignorance of some relevant fact? What about cases of moral (as opposed to factual) ignorance? Suppose that I think killing an innocent at the behest of my mob boss is showing loyalty and so morally laudable, not morally wrong. Can I be morally responsible for my own moral ignorance, and for acts that stem from such moral ignorance? Under what conditions, and why or why not? We will read mostly contemporary philosophers on this topic, that of the epistemic conditions on responsible action.

PP470Z (2)- Free Will and Luck

forthcoming

PP480H (1): Earth System Governance

How should we govern ourselves as the planetary force we have become? What does a politics of planetary health—a symbiosis of human and earth system flourishing—look like? These are tough questions because climate change has altered the terms of political affiliation. Since our carbon pollution affects the life chances of people far removed from us in space and time, we have become members of a common public with all these people. With this in mind we will explore three sets of problems and questions. (1) Expertise as it relates to climate policy, and how this is connected to the promise (or threat) of a global scientific technocracy. To what extent should we welcome a world order structured by scientific expertise about the earth system? (2) New earth politics and the nation-state. Does the project or prospect of governing the planet undermine the legitimacy of the nation-state? Is there a form of nationalism—call it ecological nationalism—that expresses our attachment to both planet and country? (3) Narratives of planetary health. If achieving planetary health is our goal what collective narratives or epistemic frameworks will get us there?

PP480J (2): Sartre's Existential Phenomenology

This course will examine Jean-Paul Sartre's major work Being and Nothingness with the aim of clarifying and understanding the distinctivenss of his phenomenological project.

Graduate

PP680L (1): Relational Autonomy

Theories of personal autonomy focus on specifying the conditions some action, desire, decision, motivation, or life must meet in order to count as truly an agent’s own. While some feminists have been critical of the value of theorizing about autonomy given its roots in an ideal of a detached, atomistic, contracting self, others recognize its value for analyzing the ways in which various forms of oppression affect the extent to which one is able to govern one’s own life. The broad term, relational autonomy, covers work on theories of personal autonomy that take seriously the ways in which the self is embedded in and constituted by relations of various kinds; these relations include personal, political, social, historical, institutional, epistemological, metaphysical, physical, and legal relations. In this course, we will engage the debates about how best to articulate and defend a theory of relational autonomy.

PP680S (1) - Earth System Governance

PP680U (2) - The Philosophy of Multiculturalism

forthcoming

PP687C (2)- Sartre's Existential Phenomenology

This course will examine Jean-Paul Sartre's major work Being and Nothingness with the aim of clarifying and understanding the distinctiveness of his phenomenological project.

PP687H (1): Reactive Attitudes

P.F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” marked an intriguing turning point in debates about free will and moral responsibility. Strawson sought to divorce the nature of and ground for responsibility from metaphysical concerns about free will by analyzing the former in terms of our susceptibility to reactive attitudes such as resentment and indignation. Notoriously, Strawson claimed that when responsibility is understood in this way the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the legitimacy of our practices of praising and blaming agents. In his view, it is simply not possible for us to abandon the reactive attitudes due to theoretical convictions about determinism because these attitudes constitute our uniquely human way of life (what he sometimes calls “the participant attitude”); to give them up would amount to exiting our personal relationships and embracing “the objective attitude.” Our central goal in this course is to explore the nature of the reactive attitudes and how they contribute to our personal engagement with one another so that we can better evaluate Strawson’s broader compatibilist strategy. Our discussion will involve several strands of Strawson scholarship and focus on the following questions: What are the reactive attitudes? How do the reactive attitudes constitute or reinforce the participant attitude? Is Strawson correct that we cannot embrace the objective attitude universally? What roles do love, caring, and vulnerability play in the reactive attitudes?

PP688 (2): Research Seminar

In the MA Research Seminar, students share their work in progress while developing their major research papers. Discussion of student projects and research questions in the early stages enables more rapid development of research skills, as students learn from the critique of their own and their peers’ work. The research seminar affords students the opportunity to get started in earnest on their MRP in the winter term so that substantial progress is made before spring. The distinctive theme of our program means there are common threads, concepts and problems amongst student projects even in disparate subfields. Students gain valuable insight and ideas from hearing other student work, and acquire valuable skills in learning to constructively interrogate and critique each others’ work. Getting started on what might otherwise be an intimidating project is collaborative.