Courses

Courses

Fall 2005

  • Visit Bearings to search for courses by title, instructor, department, and more.
  • Login to Blackboard. Instructional materials are available on a course-by-course basis.
024. How to be Good
Matthew Stuart M 2:30 - 3:25, W 2:30 - 3:25, F 2:30 - 3:25 Hubbard-22
An introduction to ethical theory, and an exploration of some very challenging arguments about what it takes to be a morally good person. Our focus will be on whether being a morally good person requires that one devote a large portion of one's resources to relieving the suffering of distant strangers. Readings include Simon Blackburn's "Being Good," the Nick Hornby novel "How to Be Good," and Peter Unger's "Living High and Letting Die."
111. Ancient Philosophy
Denis Corish M 11:30 - 12:55, W 11:30 - 12:55 Mass-Faculty Room
The sources and prototypes of Western thought. Emphasis on the pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato and Aristotle.
152. Death
Matthew Stuart M 9:30 - 10:25, W 9:30 - 10:25, F 9:30 - 10:25 Kanbar Hall - 107
Considers distinctively philosophical questions about death: Do we have immortal souls? Is immortality even desirable? Is death a bad thing? Is suicide morally permissible? Does the inevitability of death rob life of its meaning? Readings from historical and contemporary sources.
221. History of Ethics
Lawrence Simon M 1:00 - 2:25, W 1:00 - 2:25 Sills-117
How should one live? What is the good? What is my duty? What is the proper method for doing ethics? The fundamental questions of ethics are ex?am?ined in classic texts including works of Aristotle, Hume, Mill, Kant, and Nietzsche.
223. Logic
Scott Sehon M 10:30 - 11:25, W 10:30 - 11:25, F 10:30 - 11:25 Searles-115
The central problem of logic is to determine which arguments are good and which are bad. To this end, we introduce a symbolic language and rigorous, formal methods for seeing whether one statement logically implies another. We apply these tools to a variety of arguments, philosophical and otherwise. We also demonstrate certain theorems about the formal system we construct.
334. Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Scott Sehon T 1:00 - 2:25, TH 1:00 - 2:25 Edward Pols House-Conference Room
Do we have free will and moral responsibility? Can we have free will and moral responsibility if determinism is true? More broadly, can we have free will if all human behaviors can be explained scientifically? Contemporary sources.
335. The Philosophy of Aristotle
Denis Corish M 6:30 - 9:25 Edward Pols House-Conference Room
A textual study of the basics of Aristotle’s philosophy. Aristotle’s relationship to Plato, his criticism of the Platonic doctrine of Forms, and Aristotle’s own doctrines of substance, causation, actuality, potentiality, form, and matter are discussed. Some of the Aristotelian disciplines of logic, physics, metaphysics, psychology, and moral philosophy are examined in terms of detailed specific doctrines, such as that of kinds of being, the highest being, the soul, and virtue.

Previous Semesters Courses