Felmon's Course Matters

We focus on important works by three thinkers important to contemporary self-understanding: Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre (the latter two are among the founders of philosophical movements, Phenomenology and Existentialism respectively). Original and radical, they rejected standard approaches and often raised unusual questions about the meaning of existence, the nature of morality, the possibility of knowledge, the role of culture.

We will take a long albeit selective and limited look at a major work; we can only touch a corner of what these thinkers have produced. But it is an adventure in steady exploration and close reading of sometimes very difficult texts. No one theme meshes their divergent approaches together but there is one theme which concerns them all, the problem of nihilism: the possible emptiness of all values.

You will find the Repository for this course at http://punzel.org/20C

We settle for this characterization: ethical theory is the examination of the whole practice of ethics with an eye to determining whether its procedures, concepts and presuppositions are coherent, suitable for their purposes (whatever they are!) and consistent with what we (think we) know about reality. The study of ethics must also address these issues but ethical theory focusses on them front and center.

It is more instructive to look at some of the questions that fall under its heading, including:
How we should make ethical judgments?
Are our judgments true or false, or otherwise non-arbitrary?
Are our best considered judgments consistent with one another and with other facts?
How much or why should we care about making these judgments and acting accordingly?
Is it possible to act accordingly?
Can we even know what is right or wrong?

The Repository for this course is at http://punzel.org/Theory.

Self is as world is and as our world changes, our conceptions of who or what we are, of our boundaries and spheres of control, of our value as individual human beings and of our ability to act on the collectives we belong to, also change. The computers as such and conjoined in a global information system have altered our world in all these ways.

The course is meant as a forum for discussion, analysis and reflection on these changes and the claims made about them. Your ‘instructor’ can claim no mastery and is engaged in learning this world himself; he puts some readings on the table, roughly arranged and related to these themes, and invites you to join him in exploration; he brings the nose of the philosopher for fishy arguments and the need to encourage students to joyful awareness, you (like he) bring your ideas, your objections, your hopes and fears: we all profit.

We approach the study of ethics from three directions: consideration of some of its main theoretical problems, a study of some theories that are supposed to address these problems and an examination of some ethical issues as people encounter them. We want to see how much and maybe also how little theory can illuminate issues we encounter as concernful thinkers and doers.

Although the elements are unavoidably, and very usefully, mixed, there are two main components to our inquiry, the theoretical and the practical (applied). The main theoretical problems include:

Is it rational for a person to be moral or not?
What (if anything) gives ethical claims and principles validity?
How do we make correct moral judgments?

The dilemma is this: denial of the truth of ethical judgments seems to lead to a relativism almost no one is willing to tolerate outside of the seminar room as the recent calls to ‘moral clarity’ after the events of 9/11 testify. But assertion of the truth of ethical judgments seems to lead to the kinds of aggressive dogmatism that feeds such horrors and flies in the face of the evident diversity of moral beliefs both within and between cultures.
It makes sense to consider the issues in the light of recent philosophical analysis with an eye to making sense of recent theories which propose a kind of realism about moral judgments, that is, the claim that moral judgments can literally be true (or false). To this end we review the most important recent statement of the position.
The syllabus and other materials relating to the course to be found in the Repository.

The course examines some basic issues of religion through the arguments and methods of philosophy. The ‘Problem of Evil’ provides a provocative starting-point for theological explorations into concepts of human freedom, the existence of God (as understood in traditional monotheism), knowledge of God, the plurality of religious beliefs and the relations between religion, ethics and politics. The course takes an ‘analytical’ approach which lays emphasis on the use of argument to evaluate religious claims.

Note that the focus of investigation is on the theological claims of Western theism (especially Christianity). No slight is intended to other traditions and their history of promises and problems and in no case is it a question here of endorsing beliefs but of appraising them. Information about other traditions is welcome if it illuminates issues under discussion. (The Philosophy Department also offers courses specifically on some non-Western religions; please consult the Philosophy Department webpages for more information; see especially Prof. Patrik’s courses.)

The syllabus and other materials relating to the course to be found in the Repository.

The Philosophy of Mind is a rather large tree from which hangs many a ripe fruit for thought. In this course we savor philosophical approaches to our knowledge of the “mind": our knowledge of others’ minds, animal and computer ‘minds’, and the relation (identity?) between “mind” and “matter". We browse some contemporary cognitive science and its implications for grasping the mind’s unity (or not) and the so-called “inner/outer” boundary of the mind.

A major goal of the course is to introduce the student to some of the arguments and ideas in current philosophy of mind, to explore philosophical analysis (its strengths and its weaknesses) and in general, to offer an opportunity to sharpen analytical insight and the student’s ability to formulate it in discussion and writing.

Syllabi and other course materials in the Repository