Spring 2025 Philosophy Courses

PHIL 100 (Introduction to Philosophy),

PHIL 102 (Ethics),

PHIL 105 (Happiness and Meaning in Life), and

PHIL 106 (Logic).

In the spring of 2025, we are also offering the following 200-level and 300-level courses. (For more information, see NEST.)

PHIL 260 Philosophies of Art – Perspectives on Beauty

Meghan Robison
W 11:00-1:45
CRN 22399

Description: Once considered the pinnacle of artistic achievement, beauty is no longer highly regarded by contemporary artists or philosophers of art. Indeed, nowadays, beauty is more often viewed as a restrictive standard that represses individual and cultural differences by enforcing uniformity and prompting an unattainable ideal of perfection. How did this change in perspective come about? In this course, we will explore the shifting role of beauty in art by examining various historical and contemporary philosophical perspectives. Readings will be drawn from primary texts including Plato’s, Symposium, Augustine’s, Confessions, Immanuel Kant’s, Critique of Judgement, Friedrich Schiller’s, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, G.W.F. Hegel’s, Aesthetics, Laura Mulvey’s, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Arthur Danto’s The Abuse of Beauty, and more. Through this exploration, we will reconsider the importance of beauty in art and reassess its value in our lives today. (This course satisfies a Values requirement in the Philosophy Major.)

PHIL 264 Critical Reasoning and Arguments

Daniel Richmond
T/TH 8:00AM–9:25AM
CRN 22407

Description: This course is focused on providing students with the tools and perspectives to understand and properly evaluate the complex argumentation encountered in academic philosophy, other inquiry, and ordinary life. This will result in an improvement in their ability to comprehend, insightfully critique, and generate that argumentation in their own work. ​We will study topics such as symbolic logics, Bayesian inference, counterfactual, modal and analogical reasoning, probability, visual argument mapping.​ (This course satisfies the Logic requirement in the philosophy major.)

PHIL 280 Philosophy of Technology

Daniel Richmond
T/TH 10:00–11:25
CRN 22400

Description: We are steeped in technology. The philosopher David Kaplan puts it this way: “Our world is largely a constructed environment; our technologies and technological systems form the background, context, and medium for our lives.” In our contemporary culture, it has become increasingly clear that our technology progresses faster than our understanding of how best to manage and use it. In this course we will employ the tools of philosophy to examine the ways in which technology affects our interactions with others, and the ways in which technology affects our society (the positive and the not-so-positive). We will accomplish this by drawing upon principles from ethics and political philosophy. By drawing upon the methodology of existential phenomenology, we will examine the very nature of technology, the ways in which technology shapes our experience of our surroundings, and the ways in which it influences our self-identities. (This course is a Philosophy Elective.)

Phil 288 Introduction to Cognitive Science

• PHIL 288-01, M/W 8:00AM–9:25 (David Sorensen)
• PHIL 288-02 M/W 10:00–11:25 (David Sorensen)
• PHIL 288-03 T/Th 12:00–1:25 (Lauren Covey)

Description: An introduction to the multidisciplinary field of cognitive science. Topics include: the mind-body problem, thought as computation and the computer model of the mind, the role of representation in mental activity. Emphasis will be upon the methodological approaches found in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, and philosophy.

(This course serves as an Elective in the philosophy major, satisfies the 288 requirement in the Cognitive Science minor, and counts toward the philosophy minor. Each class is crosslisted under PHIL, LNGN, and PSYC so has 3 crns each; there is no difference between those sub-sections.)

PHIL 291 Philosophy of A.I.

Matthew Menchaca
M/W 5:20-6:45
CRN 22404

Description: Questions about artificial intelligence (AI) have been of interest to philosophers since at least the 1950s. For example: What exactly is AI? What assumptions underlie the belief that AI is even possible? How will we know if we have achieved AI with human-level intelligence? How would we program an “ethical” AI? What should we think about the relationship between AI and human creativity? Does AI represent an existential threat to humanity? This course explores the rich body of philosophical work on questions of this sort. Through this exploration, we’ll come to better understand the philosophical assumptions that underlie contemporary debates, and concerns, about the rise of AI. (This course satisfies a Knowledge and Reality requirement or a major Elective in the Philosophy major.)

PHIL 295 Philosophies of the Self

Tiger Roholt
M 11:00–1:45
CRN 22408

Description: When you say “I” or “me” what are you referring to? There has been much disagreement in philosophy over the nature of the self/subject/person. In this course we will consider the metaphysical complexities of what the self might be, and the epistemological complexities of how we might know it. A secondary aspect of the course will involve considering whether certain conceptions of the self suggest that some ways of conducting our lives are better than others. We will read philosophers from both the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy, such as Descartes, Hume, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Shoemaker, and Parfit. (This course satisfies a History requirement in the Philosophy Major.)

PHIL 337 Analytic Philosophy

Jon Morgan
T 2:00–4:45
CRN 22405

Description: Many think of contemporary philosophy as dividing into two traditions: continental and analytic. This course will explore the latter tradition. Among other things, it will include discussion of key figures within the tradition; the regulative roles of common sense and science; the importance of language and argument; reliance on formal tools from logic and mathematics; the (apparent) rise and fall of conceptual analysis; critiques of analytic philosophy; and contemporary analytic methodology. The course will cover these topics by examining significant, primary texts from the analytic tradition. The goal, ultimately, is to achieve a general familiarity with analytic philosophy that allows one to appreciate both its power and its limits. (This course satisfies a Traditions requirement in the Philosophy major.)

PHIL 395 Philosophies of the Self

Tiger Roholt
M 11:00–1:45
CRN 22406

This course meets with PHIL 295. See 295, above, for the description. (This course satisfies a History requirement in the Philosophy major.)