Philosophy
Christopher Tollefsen, Chair
The Department of Philosophy offers the Bachelor of Arts degree program with a major in philosophy.
Courses
Topics selected by the instructor for specialized study. Course content varies and will be announced in the schedule of classes by title.
An introduction to the main problems of philosophy and its methods of inquiry, analysis, and criticism. Works of important philosophers will be read. Honors section offered.
A study of the moral principles of conduct and the basic concepts underlying these principles, such as good, evil, right, wrong, justice, value, duty, and obligation, as they relate to specific issues or areas of life. May be repeated as content varies by title.
Carolina Core: VSR
Philosophical foundations of inductive inference, including probability, statistics, and decision theory; application of the methods and results of inductive inference to philosophical problems such as the problem of rationality, epistemology, theory confirmation, social and political philosophy.
Carolina Core: ARP
Formal logic, including foundational logical concepts, syntax and semantics of first-order logic; derivations; applications.
Carolina Core: ARP
Intermediate topics in predicate logic, including second-order predicate logic; meta-theory, including soundness and completeness; introduction to non-classical logic
Carolina Core: ARP
Selected philosophical problems as they are presented in imaginative and theoretical literature. Works of fiction and philosophical treatments of issues involved in them will be read and discussed.
Moral issues confronting men and women in contemporary society. Topics will vary but may include discussion of problems related to abortion, drugs, euthanasia, war, social engineering, and punishment of criminals.
Carolina Core: VSR
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Community Service, GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Images of the human person in contemporary philosophy, literature, psychology, and religion, and an evaluation of these images as norms for human conduct and social policy. Particular attention may be given to images found in specific philosophical traditions, including existentialism, Marxism, behaviorism, and mysticism.
Moral issues confronting men and women in contemporary society and the challenges of communicating effectively about them. Topics will vary but may include access to health care, euthanasia, abortion, same sex marriage and the moral and environmental consequences of eating animals.
Cross-listed course: SPCH 213
Carolina Core: CMS, VSR
Attempts to distinguish science from pseudo-science; inquiry into such cases as astrology, psychoanalysis, and parapsychology.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
An introduction to the work of ancient philosophers, with special emphasis on Plato and Aristotle.
Cross-listed course: CLAS 301
Problems such as hedonism, providence, belief and evidence, and mysticism, as they appear in the writings of Epicureans, Stoics, Sceptics, and Plotinus.
Cross-listed course: CLAS 302
Major philosophical traditions in the Middle Ages.
An introduction to Continental and British philosophy running roughly from Descartes through Kant.
An introduction to Continental and British philosophy since Kant through study of the works of representative philosophers. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of Idealism, Marxism, Existentialism and Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy.
The principal movements of philosophical thought from Colonial times to the present, with special emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.
An introduction to existentialist themes in contemporary philosophy, literature, psychology, and religion. The writings of existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Buber, May, and Binswanger will be read and discussed.
Examination of ancient Greek and Roman philosophical, medical, and literary works (in English) as sources for the origins of medical ethics. Priority enrollment for Medical Humanities students.
Cross-listed course: CLAS 360
Introduction to ancient medicine: science and art, theory and practice, healing and predicting. Topics include: Medicine before Hippocrates, Hippocratic medicine, holism, naturalism, medicine, religion and magic, medicine and scientific explanation, Hellenistic medicine and methodology, Galenic medicine.
Cross-listed course: CLAS 361
A historical overview and critical introduction to the philosophical practices of Asian religions; an examination of the basic worldviews, thought frameworks, and foundational questions of the main schools of premodern Asian religious philosophy.
Cross-listed course: RELG 334
A study of the moral principles of conduct and the basic concepts underlying these principles, such as good, evil, right, wrong, justice, value, duty, and obligation. The ethical works of influential philosophers are analyzed in terms of these concepts.
Carolina Core: VSR
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
The concepts of Person and Justice as they relate to biomedical sciences and technologies.
Carolina Core: VSR
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Community Service, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Examination of principles and arguments surrounding moral issues involving the environment.
Cross-listed course: ENVR 322
Carolina Core: VSR
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Community Service, GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences, GLD: Research
Role of ethical judgments in directing or curtailing scientific research; case studies from natural and social sciences.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Ethical problems in business; application to business situations of philosophical theories of individual, corporate, and governmental rights and responsibilities.
Carolina Core: VSR
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
An investigation of ethical issues in engineering and engineering-related technology. Topics include whistleblowing, employee/employer relations, environmental issues, issues related to advances in information technology, and privacy.
Carolina Core: CMS, VSR
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Community Service, GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
An examination and critical assessment of the philosophical concepts, issues, and questions surrounding the relationship of church and state.
An overview of major themes in political philosophy such as the nature of politics, obligation, community, representation, freedom, equality, and justice.
Cross-listed course: POLI 300
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
The fundamental concepts of a criminal justice system and their philosophical bases. Rights, privacy, responsibility, and the problem of justification of state control of private behavior through punishment and therapy.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy
A critical examination of the theories of education of such philosophers as Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, Newman, and Whitehead. Emphasis is on the development of a philosophy of higher education.
Recent Marxist-inspired critics of politics, science, technology, art, advertising, and other aspects of cultural life, with comparison both to Marx’s philosophical and economic writings and to other types of contemporary criticisms.
Introduces feminist philosophy and applications to philosophical problems.
Cross-listed course: WGST 334
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy
Philosophical problems relating to the arts, with emphasis on questions pertaining to aesthetic experience.
Selected philosophical problems as they are presented in feature and documentary films.
Examination of skeptical attacks, critical defenses, and philosophical theories of what we know and what is to be taken as ultimate reality.
Philosophical theories about the nature of consciousness, the problem of qualia, phenomenal concepts, the explanatory gap hypothesis, higher-order consciousness, prospects for naturalistic accounts of consciousness.
The principal movements of philosophical thought from Colonial times to the present, with special emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy
Philosophy and history of science and their interaction from ancient Greece to the present. Emphasis on physics, astronomy, and chemistry.
A philosophical investigation of research methods used in science and medicine from systematic reviewing and randomized controlled trials to theories of sampling and causal inference.
Formal theories of rationality in the context of decision-making and games; uses of these formal theories to address traditional philosophical issues such as rationality, knowledge, choice, social welfare, cooperation, and communication.
Topics selected by the instructor for specialized study. Course content varies and will be announced in the schedule of classes by title.
Overview of philosophical theories and debates with attention to skills in discussion and presentation and in preparing and writing a research paper in philosophy. Topics selected by the instructor.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
Contract approved by instructor, advisor, and department chair is required for undergraduate students.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
Theory and criticism of film and media from the 1910s to the present. Considers a range of critical approaches to analyzing what different forms of audio-visual media do to and for the audiences they address and the worlds they depict.
Review of central topics in philosophy serving as a capstone course for senior majors in philosophy.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
Experiential Learning: Experiential Learning Opportunity
Directed research resulting in a written thesis. Senior philosophy major or double major, GPA of 3.30, permission of faculty member.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Research
A historical and critical survey of the British philosophers of experience. Principal concentration is on Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
A critical and historical study of the 17th-century European philosophers. The works of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are emphasized.
A critical study of recent and contemporary works in philosophical analysis, and an evaluation of the purposes, methods, and results of this movement.
An intensive study of selected Dialogues by Plato.
An intensive study of some of the more important of Aristotle's works.
A historical and critical study of the works of the leading medieval philosophers.
An intensive study of the philosophical writings of Hume, especially A Treatise of Human Nature.
An intensive study of the work of Kant, especially the Critique of Pure Reason.
An examination of some representative theories of truth, meaning, probability, and perception.
A presentation and philosophical examination of the fundamentals of modern symbolic logic.
A critical examination of methods and concepts of the sciences. Topics include scientific revolutions, the unity of science, experimentation, explanation, and evidence.
A philosophical examination of historical inquiry. Theories of historical development. The logical problems of historical explanation.
Survey of recent and historical developments in ethical theory with special emphasis on the meaning of ethical language and the forms of reasoning employed in discussing moral values.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
A critical study of selected problems in the philosophy of religion. Emphasis is placed on problems relating to the existence of God, religious knowledge, and the language of religion.
Detailed examination of the literature on aesthetics.
The goals of inquiry and problems such as objectivity, reduction, value freedom, and ideology.
Axiomatic development of logic and the set-theoretic foundations of mathematics.
Introduction to the study of linguistic meaning, including the following topics: meaning, reference, and truth; the connections among language, thought, and reality; word meaning and sentence meaning; possible worlds and modality; thematic roles; meaning and context; presupposition and implicature; speech acts; formal semantics; and cognitive semantics.
Philosophical problems about logic, the development of philosophical logics, and the problems surrounding them.
Examination of major conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues in biological science. Topics include reductionism, units of selection, adaptationism, relations between evolutionary and developmental biology and between biology and society.
Recent contributions to three central strands of ethical theory: virtue theory, deontology, and utilitarianism; historical roots and recent developments.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Professional and Civic Engagement Leadership Experiences
Systematic approaches to data analysis--Bayesian, Fisherian and decision theoretic--will be critically appraised. Applications of these theories to some problems of inductive logic: the paradoxes of confirmation, the role of simplicity, and the probability of inductive generalizations.
Recent theories of distributive justice and their application to such issues as redistribution of wealth, reverse discrimination, and the conflict between liberty and equality. Authors include Rawls, Nozick, Hayek, and Popper.
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Community Service, GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy, GLD: Global Learning
An examination of European social philosophy associated with either the Frankfurt School of Social Research or contemporary French Poststructuralism.
An exploration of the connections between oppression of women and oppression of nature.
Cross-listed course: WGST 535
Graduation with Leadership Distinction: GLD: Diversity and Social Advocacy
Selected contemporary European philosophical movements, their views on language, and their approach to interpretation: hermeneutics, structuralism, poststructuralism.