Course Offerings for 2017/18

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?

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?

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.

*this course can be found in LORIS under the subject-heading "History & Philosophy of Science"

An introduction to central topics in the history and philosophy of science in Western culture up to the end of the 18th century, including discussion of the emergence, success and relative prestige of science; the concepts of progress and revolution; and the establishment and implementation of the Newtonian worldview in its social context.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

An introduction to Indian philosophy. This course explores such topics as Indian (i.e., South Asian) approaches to questions about the nature of the self, reality, knowledge, and moral conduct.

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.

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.

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

An investigation of the effectiveness of science as a means for obtaining knowledge. Topics may include the nature of method and explanation, the relation between observation and theory, the role of mathematics and reason in the construction and application of theory, and appraisal of competing scientific claims.

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

An inquiry into the causes and possible cures for political violence, focusing on the nature of political power and the associated phenomena of conventional war, nuclear war and terrorism. Discussion will include such topics as the moral and practical bases of civil government, differing views of the nature and aims of international relations, the causes and potential justifications for various forms of political violence (including war and terrorism), the principles and practice of non-violence as a mode of political intervention, and various suggestions concerning our prospects for achieving peace on a global level.

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.

This course aims to introduce students to the thought of Emil Cioran. Considered by French critics as one of the foremost French-language stylists and awarded numerous literary prizes (Rivarol, Sainte-Beuve, Combat, Nimier), Cioran is little-known in North-America. Romanian-born, he lived and worked in France from 1937 until the end of his life in 1995. His works contain a mixture of skeptical, Nietzschean and existentialist themes (dispair, anxiety, suicide, the struggle with and against God and faith, mysticism, etc.). All of these are blended together and expressed in a gripping, flamboyant style designed to provoke and outrage the reader. Reading Cioran can often feel like an adventure: the text carries the reader, sometimes even against one's own critical judgment, and one has to struggle to recover one's footing. Cioran provides an original alternative to the “engaged literature” and the existentialist views of other French writers of the period (e.g. Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, etc).       

In this course we will cover one of Cioran's works: A Short History of Decay, Arcade Publishing 2012 (available at Laurier bookstore). We will also read passages from other philosophers such as Nietzsche and Sartre and compare these with Cioran's views. We will also look at secondary sources.

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.

An investigation into basic assumptions about masculinity and femininity and their influence upon conceptual frameworks appearing in theories of mind, knowledge, ethics, society and culture.

An introduction to ancient philosophy from Thales to Plato. The relation of myth to philosophy, the Presocratics, Socrates and Plato's dialogues will be topics for discussion.

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.

The objective of this course is for students to acquire familiarity with the central themes of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s influential book, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Topics covered include selected issues in the philosophy of language and mind, as well as metaphysics and metaphilosophy. Special emphasis will be placed on Wittgenstein’s challenges to traditional theories of meaning and understanding, his distinctive set of conceptual tools (‘language-games’, ‘family resemblances’, ‘forms of life’, etc.), Wittgenstein’s much discussed critiques of private languages and rule-based accounts of language, and his view of philosophy as a form of therapy for ‘sicknesses of the understanding.’

Physicalism is the view that human beings are nothing more than very complex physical creatures. There are, of course, many different ways of articulating this idea. Physicalism is a broad philosophical heading that includes such theories as behaviourism, type-identity theory, token-identity theory, supervenience, eliminative materialism, and—with some provisos—functionalism. Although philosophers continue to disagree about which form of physicalism is correct, the orthodox view in philosophy of mind is that some form of physicalism is true. Despite this broad agreement, there is a pocket of resistance against physicalism. Members of this resistance share the intuition that the subjective features of conscious experience (or “qualia” as they are often called) generate serious problems for any physicalist theory. For instance, they claim that physicalist theories cannot capture what it is like to smell a rose or to see red, in which case physicalism is incomplete in some way. This course explores various articulations of this anti-physicalist intuition and will critically evaluate the effectiveness of physicalists’ replies to them. Topics discussed will include the knowledge argument, epiphenomenalism, inverted qualia, the possibility of zombies, and HOT theory.

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.

Feminist phenomenology is interested in describing specifically female experiences—those left uncharted in the phenomenological tradition—using the conceptual tools and methodological framework of phenomenology. In this course, we will focus on feminism's ambiguous relationship with the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, examining critiques and appropriations of some of his concepts such as the body and perception. In particular we will examine the phenomenological concept of experience and discuss its application by exploring phenomena as it is described in the work of Judith Butler, Iris Marion Young, Sandra Lee Bartky, and other feminist philosophers. Topics of inquiry may include: gender, pregnancy and giving birth, menstruation, being breasted, self-alienation, eating disorders, and sexual violence.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics examines the question of how to live a good human life where the goodness of that life implies that it is intrinsically satisfying to the person living it. While there is broad agreement that a good human life will be a happy life, there remain disagreements about what constitutes a happy life. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle develops an account of the happy or excellent human life as a life of virtuous activity. He rejects the idea that a good or happy life can be achieved by following a list of ethical rules and instead develops an account of the virtuous life which includes, for example, sensitivity to the sort of situation one is in (is it time to be funny, to be courageous, to be generous?), the ability to identify and choose the mean, and the cultivation of appropriate sorts of emotional responses.

In this course, we will engage in close textual analysis of the Nicomachean Ethics; we will focus not only on developing sophisticated philosophical responses to Aristotle’s arguments, but also on the logically prior task of constructing well-supported textual interpretations.

This is an advanced course in the philosophy of mind. Our experiences as rational agents suggest that our mental states have causal effects in the physical world. For instance, when I go to get a cold drink from the refrigerator it seems to be a result of my decision to get one. However, it has proven to be notoriously difficult for nonreductive versions of physicalism to provide a plausible account of how this is possible. Numerous critics have argued that nonreductive physicalism leads to epiphenomenalism: the view that mental events or their mental properties are inefficacious. We will explore and evaluate this challenge by focusing on several key strands of this debate.

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.

In 1746, the Abbé Batteux wrote a short treatise on the beaux arts (the beautiful arts), which indicates the long association of art with the beautiful. This notion certainly predates Batteux; art in general was a means of doing things well, and ‘well’ included elegance, efficiency, refinement, and beauty. And while there have been disputes about whether one or another new art style was beautiful, the idea that art should be beautiful was assumed. Until the start of the 20th century, that is. Here marks a turning point in the philosophy of art. This can be expressed in the shift of philosophical questions from “what is art?” to “when is art?”. A central component of this shift is the issue of beauty.

The two central readings in this course explore the relation between art and beauty. Arthur Danto argues that the history of art through the 20th century demonstrates conclusively that art need not be beautiful, that beauty is not an essential component of art. Denis Dutton, on the other hand, argues that art has an evolutionary function, that we are adapted to find art beautiful (and pleasing) for practical reasons. We will debate the merits of these two positions and whether they can be reconciled or are essentially antagonistic.

This is a senior seminar on the ethical dimensions of climate change. Philosophers have been increasingly drawn to the problem of climate change as a specifically ethical issue. This is because climate change challenges the way we think about global wealth distribution, unequal exposure to risk, fair terms of bargaining, our duties to future generations, the threat posed to biodiversity by large-scale anthropogenic environmental alteration, and more. In this course, we are going to look at the best philosophical work on these and related issues. Questions include: (1) How do we assess responsibility for climate change? (2) Which countries should bear the lion’s share of costs for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and why? What principles can we appeal to in order to determine who pays what to whom? (3) What is the best theoretical approach to evaluating this problem (utilitarianism, rights-theory, virtue ethics)? (4) Is climate change just an economic problem? Why or why not? (5) How are larger issues of population and consumption related to humanity’s current climate change impasse? (6) What is the value of biodiversity and how might we incorporate this value into our policy deliberations?