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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
A presentation and examination of selected texts in the analytic tradition from J. S. Mill and Frege to Kripke. Focus is on topics such as reference, naming, predication, necessity and truth with an emphasis on their import for questions concerning the meaning of existence.
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3.00 Credits
This is a meta-mathematical/meta-scientific course in philosophical analysis. The concepts to be investigated are drawn from the fields of mathematics, physics and cosmology (e.g., number, shape, gravity, force, energy, matter, space, time, infinity, singularity). Focused attention will be given to the traditional “paradoxes” associatedwith the attempt to understand these concepts as well as to the more contemporary “anomalies” brought to light in the investigations ofphysics and astrophysics.
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3.00 Credits
These courses provide an opportunity for in-depth study in a particular area of philosophy. The specific thematic focus and approach taken in each course will vary according to student interest and faculty expertise.
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3.00 Credits
Independent study is intended for any student wanting a program of study in philosophy for which there is no existing course in the department. A student who wishes to pursue an independent study project for academic credit must submit, prior to registration, a proposed plan of study that includes the topic to be studied and goal to be achieved, the methodology to be followed, schedule of supervision, end product, evaluation procedure and number of credits sought. The proposal must be approved by the supervising faculty member, the department chair and the academic vice president and dean. It will be kept on file in the dean of arts and science’s office.
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3.00 Credits
This course pays close attention to our own historicity. Each participant will make a conscious attempt to be authentic in responding to the question, “Who am I ”, and to engage the question of themeaning of their own identity and existence in relation to the cosmos, transcendence and society. The selected readings and pedagogy employed will serve as a maieutic – midwife - in the Socratic sense: inspiring the student to articulate who he or she is, and how she ought to live with others, care for the earth, and collaborate in originating creative healing social and environmental structures. In this connection we will engage the significance and implications of the following phenomenon: “to equip an animal with intelligence constitutes not only the possibility of culture and of science but also the possibility of every abomination that has occurred in the course of human history.” Prerequisites: PHL 102, 201, 301 or 302 or 303.
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3.00 Credits
A selection of integrative seminars designed to investigate the presuppositions, structures and images that underlie the human attempt to understand and participate in the world. Each seminar will focus on a theme of general scope and significance and, in so doing, will enable students to come to a reflective understanding of their own assumptions and values in the context of what they have encountered in their previous years of study. Emphasis will be placed on student discussion and active integration of material through written work and class presentations.
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3.00 Credits
Whether through a poem, a philosophical reflection, a piece of music or work of art, whether through falling in love, the power and challenge of one’s life’s vocationor a meandering boat ride up the Merrimac River, each of us has experienced the sublime state of meaningfulness. Some may have also experienced, in the evaporation of such meaning, the specter of meaninglessness. This course brings the tools of philosophical analysis to bear upon the phenomenon of meaning or meaningfulness. Through careful phenomenological study of the richly variated “family” of meaning-structures, each participant is provided with anopportunity for a critical understanding of the nature of humankind’s engagement with meaningfulness. The course is predicated upon a presumed intimacy between our concern with meaning and the phenomenon romance. Thus, the distinctive but intertwined roles of mythos and logos in the creation of romance will serve as thematic threads into the investigation of meaning. The purpose of this experience is to afford each participant a greater appreciation of the birth and death of meaning, the manner in which it sustains us and the full-blown range of its opportunity.
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3.00 Credits
This seminar will involve varied readings from world literature, augmented by some extra readings from philosophy and psychology in search of responses to the question, “What makes a person great ” Ofcentral concern will be the issue of the nature of the heroic; we will also be concerned with some other philosophical problems which arise in connection with this question (such as: the problem of evil; personal identity; determinism, free will and fatalism; death; the mind-body problem and the problem of other minds; philosophical anthropology and philosophical psychology as well as some philosophy of psychology; philosophical analysis of religious experience).
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3.00 Credits
We can learn a great deal about the human condition from the struggles of human beings coping with the loss (or threat of loss) of aspects of experience that many of us take for granted most of the time: personal freedom, health and well-being, integrity and dignity, mobility, cultural stability, economic security. Looking at diverse cultural, historical and personal contexts (colonial Africa, American slavery, the Holocaust, the current AIDS crisis, physical disability), this course will explore the human being’s struggle to find new sources of meaning and strength under conditions of profound challenge and limitation. An encounter with human differences as well as an exploration of what human beings have in common, the course also hopes to provide students with an opportunity to reflect philosophically on their own lives and the challenges they have met or will be faced with in the future. Assigned material will consist of short stories, novels, auto biographies and films.
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3.00 Credits
Investigations into questions concerning the relations between philosophical theories of ethics and actual works of art, including novels, paintings, plays, poetry and films, have recently been increasing. This course explores the thesis that philosophical theories of ethics, which state their case at a high level of generality, must be complemented and/or completed by detailed, individual case studies. It challenges students to bring human actions, their own and others, into relief through casting the lights of rival theories of ethics upon them. It works to reveal the differing social consequences of the adoption and/or truth of this or that theory of ethics for everyday life. Selected works of art are studied to determine what is gained and what is sacrificed in particular lives by putting trust in this or that theory. Finally, the course explores various philosophical questions concerning the expression of values in art and in literature. Electives in philosophy may be taken upon completion of PHL 201 unless otherwise noted.
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