Philosophy 308 “Metaphysics: What is Reality.” Most of us think we have a good idea about what is real and what isn’t. Cars, cabbages, and canaries fall into one category, and time machines, Tinkerbell, and talking sandwiches belong to another. But what makes something real? And are all real things real in the same way,… [Read More]
Philosophy 307: “Environmental Philosophy: Thinking Like a Mountain”
Philosophy 307: “Environmental Philosophy: Thinking Like a Mountain.” Aldo Leopold famously maintains that “[a] thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise” (“The Land Ethic,” A Sand County Almanac (Oxford University Press, 1949: 223-4). This much celebrated claim has… [Read More]
Philosophy 306: “Knowledge and Reality”
Philosophy 306: “Knowledge and Reality.” Skeptical hypotheses such as the idea that you might now be dreaming generate interesting questions about the limits of our knowledge. But we don’t need to entertain such radical notions to raise deep and (some would say) more perplexing concerns about what we can know. This course explores some of… [Read More]
Philosophy 225: “Early Modern Philosophy”
Philosophy 225: “Early Modern Philosophy.” If you are like most people, you probably believe that the world consists of either physical stuff alone or both physical and immaterial things. But you probably haven’t thought much about why you believe this. And you most likely have never considered yet another possibility – that the world is… [Read More]
Philosophy 209: “Ethics and Medicine”
Philosophy 209: “Ethics and Medicine.” Ethical issues that arise in medicine and the health sciences are as controversial as they are complex. This course uses traditional moral theories to explore problems that can appear in caregiver-patient relationships and at the margins of life. To lay a foundation for this work, we first study key moral… [Read More]
Philosophy 207: “Ethics and the Environment”
Philosophy 207: “Ethics and the Environment.” We live in a country that loves big cars and super-sized houses, and much of what people eat and wear travels thousands of miles to reach them. Shopping is a national pastime, and – if bumper stickers are believed – the person who dies with the most “toys” wins. … [Read More]