Student Information
Course Descriptions
101 -- Introduction to Philosophy
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: na
This course will explore some of the central problems of philosophy. What is the meaning of life? Is it rational to fear death? Is morality relative to individuals or cultures? Can we act freely in a world governed by physical laws? What makes me the person that I am – my mind or my body? These are fascinating, but difficult questions. The aim of the course is to develop the intellectual skills required for thinking about them more effectively.
130 -- Introduction to Ethics
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: darms.1
Are there any differences between moral judgments, on the one hand, and judgments of personal taste, etiquette, and aesthetics, on the other? Are moral judgments all relative, and, if so, to what? Should we decide what is the morally right thing to do by looking at the consequences of our actions, or are some actions simply right in and of themselves? After examining questions like these in the first part of the course, we will turn to a discussion of some specific and pressing moral questions that have divided American society. Possible topics include abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, cloning, capital punishment, racial discrimination and affirmative action, and the just distribution of wealth. Requirements are active class participation and a variety of papers and exams.
170 -- Philosophy and Religion
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: Rudavsky.1
This course is a general introduction to major issues in the intersection of philosophy, science and religion, and will concentrate upon three seminal issues in the history of science, philosophy and religion: Creation of the universe, as reflected in Scripture and in contemporary astrophysical theory; The Decentering of the earth in astronomical and theological theory, as reflected in the Copernican revolution; and the Decentering of human beings, as reflected in the continuing conflict between Darwinian evolution and creationism. In each of these areas we will examine whether the tenets of science can be harmonized with those of faith.
215 -- Asian Philosophies
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: lee.2014
This course provides an introductory survey of various Asian philosophies. Our goals are to (1) understand what might be distinctive of Asian philosophical approaches and; (2) examine the questions raised and the answers offered with regard to certain core philosophical concerns. We start with a look at the beginnings and foundations of the long tradition of Indian thought by focusing on the Vedas, particularly, the Upanishads. Against this background, our focus will then turn to the origination and development of Buddhism. Next will be our exploration of Confucianism and Taoism, the two philosophical systems most influential in the development of Chinese philosophical thought. We will conclude by examining more recent developments of these original philosophies in Korea and Japan.
For more information, please contact Professor Sukjae Lee (lee.2014@osu.edu).
230 -- Political and Social Philosophy
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: svavarsdottir.1
What is the scope and source of the legitimate authority of a government over its subjects? What principles ought to guide or constrain the structuring of our political and social institutions? What makes a law just? What is the basis of human rights, e.g., the right to free speech? How do we justly adjudicate between conflicting rights, e.g., someone’s right to free speech and someone’s right not to be harmed? These are the kind of questions that will be addressed in this course. We will closely examine how contractarians, utilitarians, and natural rights theorists address these questions. Our approach will be historical: we will critically read and discuss classical texts such as Hobbes’ Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise, Rousseau’s Social Contract, Mill’s On Liberty. .
240 -- Introduction to the Philosophy of Art
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: kraut.1
Our goal is to understand (and evaluate) several theories about the nature and function of art. We will consider such questions as: What is the difference between creative innovation and fraudulence? Is there a "correct interpretation" of a literary text or painting? Is objective criticism possible, or is art criticism merely the expression of subjective preferences? Can artworks be understood in isolation from social-historical forces? Do artworks express emotions? Is it worth theorizing about art? Why?
We will consider these theoretical questions in the context of music, painting, film, architecture, literature, and other artforms.
250 -- Symbolic Logic
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: caplan.16
We will study sentential and predicate logic. We will learn how to do three things: (i) symbolize natural-language arguments in various formal languages, (ii) interpret those formal languages, and (iii) do proofs in those formal languages. Familiarity with Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is encouraged but not required.
280 -- Metaphysics, Religion, and Magic in the Scientific Revolution
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: downing.110
The seventeenth century saw revolutionary developments in natural science, specifically, in matter theory, mechanics, chemistry, and astronomy. These developments were thoroughly intertwined with magical traditions, religious doctrines and disputes, and, especially, philosophical theories and arguments. This course will examine some of these connections in the works of some of the most influential natural philosophers of the period. Our main goal is a richer understanding of this crucial period in the development of modern science. In addition, as with any philosophy class, we will evaluate the cogency of the arguments and the consistency and plausibility of the views we encounter.
301 -- History of Ancient Philosophy
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: silverman.3
This course is an introduction to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Roughly, the quarter will be divided in half: the first 5 weeks will be devoted to Plato; the second 5 to Aristotle. We will discuss the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics of these seminal thinkers. Readings will include the Republic, Phaedo, and Timaeus, the De Anima, and Nichomachean Ethics. Course requirements are attendance, class participation and at least one paper.
302 -- History of Medieval Philosophy
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: rudavsky.1
We'll be looking at primary texts written during the Middle Ages, in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, paying particular attention to issues in metaphysics and theory of knowledge. One of the goals of this course is to give the students a representative sample of the sorts of views that were held in the Middle Ages, and to do that we'll concentrate on understanding the debates that medieval philosophers thought the most important. Requirements will include short papers as well as a midterm and final exam.
431 -- Ethical Theory
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: svavarsdottir.1
Attempts to give principled and systematic answers to moral questions have yielded rival moral theories. These theories do not only give competing answers to specific moral questions but, also, provide us with different conceptions of what it is that makes something morally right or good. In this course, we will critically examine some of the most influential moral theories. Moreover, we will consider what place moral theorizing has or should have in our lives.
455 -- Philosophy of Science
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: Shapiro.4
This is a philosophy course about science. We will look at issues like the nature of scientific method, the limits of scientific certainty, the existence of theoretical entities, and the nature of scientific method. We will also read and study Thomas Kuhn’s influential The structure of scientific revolutions. The course will have a seminar format. Student contribution will include questions, discussion, and occasional reports. Evaluation will be based on a series of short essays, an all essay final examination, and class participation.
463 -- Introduction to Metaphysics
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: sanson.7
This course is an introduction to contemporary metaphysics. Topics covered will include: the problem of nonexistent objects; the problem of universals; the problem of change; the problem of identity over time; the presentist/eternalist and tenser/detenser debates; the problem of possible worlds. Requirements will include a midterm, a final, and a handful of short papers.
533 -- Environmental Ethics
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: turner.894
Do individuals and communities have a moral obligation to care for the natural environment? How does the environment figure into our obligations to each other? This course is intended to be an introductory survey of environmental ethics. Although the course presupposes a degree of academic maturity appropriate to a 500-level course, it should be accessible to those from disciplines other than philosophy. Our course will briefly survey major ethical doctrines, and then address more specific questions, including (but not limited to): the environmental implications of recognizing duties to other human beings, including future generations; the tragedy of the commons; the moral status of non-human animals; the intrinsic value of non-sentient animals, plants, and eco-systems.
601.01 -- Studies in 18th-Century Philosophy (Kant)
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: Silverman.3
We shall study the Metaphysics, Epistemology and Ethics of Plato. The main texts will be the Phaedo, Republic, Theaetetus. Course Requirements: 1 ten page paper.
606 -- ‘Grue’, ‘Gavagai’, and ‘Quus’: Indeterminacy Arguments in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: scharp.1
Three of the most important and influential arguments in twentieth century analytic philosophy are Nelson Goodman’s new riddle of induction (1953), W. V. Quine’s indeterminacy of translation (1960), and Saul Kripke’s skeptical paradox (1984). Goodman’s argument turns on differences between ‘green’ and ‘grue’, where something is grue if and only if it is green and examined before some time t or it is blue and not examined before t. Quine’s argument turns on differences between ‘rabbit’ and ‘gavagai’, where ‘gavagai’ is a word in some hitherto unknown language that has the same stimulus meaning (i.e., the sensory stimulations that prompt assent or dissent) as ‘rabbit’.
Kripke’s argument turns on the differences between ‘plus’ and ‘quus’, where ‘quus’ names a mathematical function that is identical to addition up to some very large but finite inputs and then diverges after that. Goodman’s new riddle of induction poses a problem for anyone who thinks that evidence about the past tells us anything about the future. Quine’s indeterminacy of translation thesis poses a problem for anyone who thinks that meaning goes beyond stimulus meaning. Kripke’s skeptical paradox poses a problem for anyone who thinks there are facts about how speakers have used their words that determines how they should use them in the future. Each of these arguments has generated a tremendous amount of discussion and several commentators have noted the similarity between them (Kripke mentions this similarity as well), but there is very little work that attempts to spell out the connection. In this seminar, we will study each of the three arguments, and some of the literature on each one. We will consider several ways of understanding what they have in common, and what, together, they can teach us.
650 -- Symbolic Logic
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: shapiro.4
An introduction to the meta-theory of first-order languages. The proof theory and model-theoretic semantics for a standard formal language will be developed. The course will include proofs of the completeness, compactness, and Löwenheim-Skolem theorems. The purpose of the course is to provide an introduction to mathematical logic, and to provide some of the logical background presupposed by many contemporary philosophical authors. Occasionally, issues in the philosophy of logic will be raised. There will be a midterm exam, a final exam, and several quizzes over homework exercises. Prerequisite: Philosophy 250 or equivalent.
660 -- Advanced Epistemology
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: roth.263
What is the nature of the warrant or justification to believe the word of another? Is it a matter of possessing evidence for their sincerity and reliability? Or is some distinctive non-evidential warrant involved? If the latter, does the warrant lie in the mere fact of the reliability of beliefs transmitted through interlocution? Is there an alternative to such reliabilist conceptions of testimonial warrant? Throughout the course, we will attempt to reconcile our enormous
epistemic dependence on others with the intellectual autonomy and responsibility that, arguably, is implicated in epistemic notions such as knowledge, justification, and warrant. We will touch on some related issues in the philosophy of action, especially in the theory of
shared agency.
673 -- Advance Philosophy of Language
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: Advance Philosophy of langueage
We will cover foundational texts and topics in philosophy of language from 1892 to 1970. Texts to be covered include Gottlob Frege, “On Sense and Reference” (1892); Bertrand Russell, “On Denoting” (1905); Keith Donnellan, “Reference and Definite Descriptions” (1966); and Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (1970). Topics to be covered include the semantics of proper names, definite descriptions, identity sentences, and propositional-attitude ascriptions.
830 -- Seminar in Ethics: Population Puzzles for Ethicists
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: hubin.1
Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, generated a foundational worry in normative ethical theory that had gone largely unrecognized to that point. It is referred to as ‘the nonidentity problem’. The problem is that many of our choices affect not only the lives of those who exist, but the very identity of who will exist. This is obviously true of our reproductive choices, but it is (less obviously) true of many other decisions we make that will have known, long-term effects. The problem is, in brief, that it looks as if no one is harmed by an action that leads to the creation of a person with a low level of well-being (provided it is not so low that it’s true that nonexistence would be preferable to living that life) even when, other things being equal, an alternative act would have led to the existence of a person with a much higher level of well-being. That is to say, no one is worse off because this action being performed rather than the alternative action. This has surprising, and troubling, moral implications.
· It looks as if there are very compelling arguments for the conclusion that the most horrific environmental destruction—destruction that would cause the suffering of millions of future persons—could be a “victimless crime”—that some of these acts harm no one despite all the suffering they cause.
· Similarly, and for the same underlying reason, it looks as if in order to justify moral judgments that most of us are loath to give up, we might have to give up a moral principle that many of have endorsed and defended—what I have called the moral “no harm, no foul” principle.
· There are compelling arguments that every birth is a “wrongful birth”—that whenever we bring a person into existence (and not just when we bring into existence a person with a very low level of well-being) we do a moral wrong.
In addition to portions of Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, we will read work by Seana Shiffrin and David Benatar, among others.
863 -- Seminar in Metaphysics
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: sanson.7
Recent works by Kit Fine and Ted Sider aim to carve out a distinctively metaphysical approach to issues in meta-metaphysics.
According to Fine, metaphysicians are not interested in ordinary facts, but in the facts that constitute reality; less metaphorically, they are interested what is *really* the case, not just what is the case. According to Sider, metaphysicians aim to uncover the structure of reality---the fundamental metaphysical joints---and, Sider argues, metaphysicians should take seriously the possibility that reality has not just predicational joints (i.e., fundamental properties), but also quantificational joints, logical joints, tense-operator joints, or modal-operator joints. Both Fine and Sider are reacting against a variety of anti-metaphysical approaches to issues in meta-metaphysics, approaches motivated in part by skepticism concerning any putative distinction between what is the case and what is really the case and by skepticism concerning the idea that reality has a fundamental structure. The aim of this seminar is to assess the plausibility and commitments of metaphysical approaches to meta-metaphysics.
H101 -- Honors Introduction to Philosophy
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: Lee.2014
In this course, we will introduce ourselves to the art of philosophy. We will aim to learn how to articulate one's views about a philosophical issue and defend this view by providing good arguments. Some examples of the topics we will be dealing with are: skepticism about the external world, the mind in a physical world, the problem of evil, and the nature of values. Readings will come from both historical and contemporary sources, and the assignments will consist of several short papers.
H276 -- Honors Honors Freshman-Sophomore Proseminar
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: darms.1
Emotions, Morality and Value. This course will explore the relationship between our human values and our emotional responses. We will take up issues such as these: In what ways do our emotional responses influence or even determine what we believe it is right or wrong to do? If emotional responses do influence or determine our moral judgments, does that mean these judgments are unreliable, or somehow bogus? Are good and bad, right and wrong, ultimately determined by how we feel? If so does that mean that they are not objective, or that they are merely matters of opinion? Do we have good reasons for any of our feelings, or are emotions just things that happen to us in ways that are unconnected to reasons? Is it morally better to act from emotion (for instance, because we care about the people we interact with) or from duty (for instance, because we think we ought to do certain things)? When our emotions tell us to do one thing and our principles tell us to do another, which should we listen to, and why? Are there moral and immoral emotions? Are jealousy and envy always bad, or wrong to feel? Does it ever make sense to feel guilty for doing the right thing, or to regret a choice you made even though it was the best available option?
We will pursue these questions by reading and discussing a variety of classic and contemporary philosophical readings. Students will be required to write philosophical essays, make class presentations, and participate actively in class discussion.
H678 -- Junior-Senior Pro-seminar
5 Credit Hours, Offered in: WIInstructor: farrell.4
This course will be devoted to a study (in English) of the writings of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It will be conducted in true seminar fashion, which means a minimum of lecturing and a maximum of roundtable discussion, with small-group student presentations at the end of the quarter. We will begin with The Genealogy of Morality and then work backwards and forwards (in Nietzsche’s other works) from there, once we’ve identified the main questions that interest us (e.g., “What or who is the Ubermensch?”; “Is Nietzsche for anything, in addition to everything he’s against?”; “What is it about his writings that have made him such a philosophical favorite of so many people and so vehemently hated by others?”, and so on). Identification of the actual questions on which we will focus will be made democratically, by the class as a whole, in the course of our discussion of the Genealogy.
Requirements will include two short papers during the term, a small-group class-presentation in the second half of the quarter, and a term paper at the end of the quarter.
