Philosophy
Philosophy 101 - Introduction to Philosophy
Description: This subject is designed to prepare students for clear, critical thinking and discourse by introducing them to the principal areas of philosophy. The initial section focuses on logic and the development of the skills of reasoned argumentation, before turning to address other principal areas in an exploratory way. These areas include the nature of knowledge and of reality, the relationship of philosophy to science and to religion, and an exploration of ethical traditions and political issues. The subject aims to develop students’ understanding of ideas and concepts implicit in the deep questions and issues which concern human beings. Questions such as: What is it to be a person? Can I be sure that other people’s experiences and sensations are like mine? Do human beings always act out of self-interest? How do we explain the regularity of nature? Must we presuppose the existence of God? How do we explain evil in the world?
Philosophy 102 - Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the philosophical study of ultimate reality. It explores the nature of our world and the arguments that have been devised in favour of various views as to what that nature is. A central strand within Western philosophy has traditionally explored these questions with reference to God and the role God plays in explaining how the world came to exist and why it is as it is. This subject will provide students with a broad grounding in the responses of philosophers to these questions, with some sustained reference to the work of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Particular questions addressed include questions such as: What is it for something to exist? What is it that makes something the same entity over time? Are you something that can exist even if your body is destroyed? What is it for a person to act freely? Is human freedom compatible with God’s foreknowledge of your actions?
Philosophy 201 - The Medieval Synthesis
This subject deals with the evolution of medieval philosophy from late classical antiquity onwards. An important theme will be the complex oppositions between Aristotelian and Platonistic tendencies, and between realistic and nominalistic tendencies, in the philosophical theories of that period, and the influence that such oppositions had on conceptions of the relationship between reason and faith. The thought of such Church Fathers as St. Augustine and Origen will be discussed, in relation to the background Platonistic or Neoplatonistic philosophical tendencies prevalent in late antiquity. Discussion of the context set by the Aristotelian logica vetus or ‘old logic’, within which Boethius and Abelard are major figures, will then lead into an exploration of the high scholasticism that followed the reintroduction into the Latin West of previously unavailable works of Aristotle, and of which St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham are major figures. The synthesis of faith and natural reason argued for by Aquinas is explored in relation to various less synergistic views of the role of natural reason in relation to faith that were held both earlier (e.g. by St. Augustine) and later (e.g. by William of Ockham) in the Middle Ages. Also discussed will be the influence of certain non-Christian thinkers (such as Avicenna and Averroes) on the reception of Aristotle’s thought in the West, particularly with respect to questions about the relations between bodies, souls, and intellects of persons.
Philosophy 202 - Moral Philosophy
This subject makes a contribution to the overall aim of integrated study at Campion College by presenting a study of the nature of morality and providing a broad historical overview of moral theories, from the classical tradition to the contrasting theories of modern thinkers. The natural norms elucidated by the thought of ancient and modern thinkers, in particular Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, Kant, and Mill and are carefully explored and then referred to the work of philosophers who take more critical positions, e.g. Nietzsche and Sartre. In addition to its historical overview, the subject focuses on meta-ethical questions and the challenges of formulating a moral theory, as well as on some issues in applied ethics.
Philosophy 301- Modern Philosophy (Elective)
This subject will focus on various threads in the development of philosophy since the 17th century, near the beginning of what we call the Modern Era. By tracing these particular lines of development, we’ll come to see what makes the philosophy of the Modern Era distinctive, e.g. a certain sort of emphasis on the human subject or self, and on what is truly knowable by it, as opposed to what might transcend it. Starting with the rationalist Descartes, the father of the Modern philosophical world-view, we’ll follow - through the empiricisms of Locke, Berkeley and Hume - the development of a foundationalism predicated on the ‘idea’-idea. The first half of the course will end with a discussion of the transcendental idealism of Kant and its philosophical legacy. The second half of the course deals with 20th century analytic philosophy and its focus on linguistic meaning. We’ll begin with a discussion of the origins of the analytic tradition in the work of Frege and Russell, and continue through the growth and then the decline of logical empiricism, into the work of such later twentieth century figures as Kripke, Putnam and Kuhn.
Philosophy 302 - Social & Political Philosophy (Elective)
This subject deals with the philosophical issues that arise in connection with such concepts as state, government, civil society, community, economy, sovereignity, political power, legitimacy, political liberty, legality, right, justice and the like. It traces the response of the Western philosophical tradition to these issues onwards from its beginnings in the work of Plato and Aristotle. The first part of the course will take us from this classical Greek beginning through to the integration of the classical-era ideas into the Christian world-picture in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. We’ll then explore various distinctively modern-era approaches to the understanding of the political realm, such as the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke, the utilitarian politics of Mill and Bentham, and the historicisms of Hegel and Marx. In the last third of the course, theories of a more recent vintage will be engaged, including the very importantly distinct liberalisms of Rawls and Nozick, and the critiques of liberalism offered in various at least equally divergent sorts of communitarianism, such as those of Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and the neo-Aristotelian Alasdair MacIntyre.
Philosophy 303 - Philosophy of Language (Elective)
This subject is intended to develop in the student an understanding of the nature and consequences of the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the course of which philosophy moved, roughly speaking, from an emphasis on the mind to an emphasis on language. Key concepts and distinctions in the philosophy of language, to be addressed in this course, include: the analytic/synthetic distinction, logical atomism, the positivist verifiability criterion, internal vs. external questions, category errors, language games, meaning holism, the indeterminacy of translation, performativity, truth-conditional semantics, referential transparency and opacity, intensionality, the New Theory of Reference, naturalized semantics, neo-Russellian direct reference theories vs. neo-Fregean theories, the pragmatics/semantics distinction, and two-dimensionalism Familiarity with these concepts will be developed in the course of an engagement with the work of Frege, Russell, and early Wittgenstein; Carnap, Ayer, and the Vienna Circle; late Wittgenstein, Quine; Austin, Grice and other speech-act theorists; Kripke, Putnam and other proponents of the New Theory of Reference; Tarski and Davidson on truth-conditional semantics; Kaplan, Humberstone & Davies, Evans and Soames on two-dimensional semantics, and various theorists of the semantics of propositional attitude ascriptions.
Philosophy 304 - Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Elective)
This subject is intended to develop in the student an understanding of the key concepts and distinctions in twentieth-century analytic philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, including: the theory/observation distinction, the deductive-nomological model, theory-ladenness, the Quine-Duhem hypothesis, normal vs. revolutionary science, scientific paradigms, the mind-body problem, qualia, behaviourism, central-state materialism, functionalism, supervenience, naturalization, and the hard problem of consciousness. Familiarity with these concepts will be developed in the course of an engagement with the work of various positivist philosophers of science, Popper, Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Smart, Putnam, Lewis, Searle, Fodor, Millikan, Dreyfus, Dennett, Davidson, Kim, and Chalmers.
Philosophy Major
Completion of eight Philosophy units constitutes a major.