Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

The main focus of this course is understanding and evaluating the assigned texts. They show us important and influential philosophical ideas. Using these texts, I want to acquaint you with philosophy’s content and techniques, and sharpen your writing and thinking. Through reading, lecture, discussion, and writing you’ll get to know philosophy’s major divisions, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, and some of the puzzles that philosophers think about. Does God exist? Is the outside world as it appears to be? Are we free? How should we lead our lives? You will learn about and evaluate major thinkers' answers to questions like these. You will enhance your critical thinking skills so that your beliefs can be better grounded in logic, deepened by an understanding of the issues at stake, and tempered with an appreciation of opposing views. In writing, you will practice expressing new and complex ideas. These critical thinking and writing skills are useful in every discipline.

Student Outcomes

To put the above another way, students will be able to: Understand and summarize a range of philosophical texts in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Identify philosophers' answers to questions such as "Does God exist?" "Is the world as it appears?" "Are we free?" and "How should we live?" Explain, using basic logic concepts, how philosophers argue for their answers to these questions. Critically evaluate the arguments philosophers and others (e.g., me, other students) give. Demonstrate your grasp of the above in reading responses, papers, exams, and discussion, at a level appropriate for a 100-level course.

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