Course Offerings
All students please note:
Undergraduate
- Fall 2020 = (1)
- Winter 2021 = (2)
- Online Fall 2020 = (OF)
- Online Winter 2021 = (OW)
PP110 (1, 2, OF): Values and Society
PP111 (1, 2, OW): Knowledge and Reality
PP201 (2, OF, OW): Reasoning and Argumentation
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
PP209 (OF,OW): Philosophy of Religion
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
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
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
PP223 (2, OF): Contemporary Moral Issues
PP224 (OW): Philosophy and the Environment
PP225 (1): Theories of Knowledge
PP229 (2): Theories of Reality
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
PP247 (OF, OW): Business Ethics
PP259 (2): Ancient Philosophy II
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
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
PP380D (2): Metaethics
PP380L (2) - The Value of Anger
PP450N (1) - Plato on Competing Goods
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
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
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?
PP680U (2) - The Philosophy of Multiculturalism
PP687C (2)- Sartre's Existential Phenomenology
PP687H (1): 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.