The following courses will be offered for the 2022 Summer Session. Information on instructors, readings and evaluation, and more specific course descriptions is to come. However, finalized descriptions and marking schemes will be given out on the first day of classes with your course syllabus. The timetable information is subject to change. The Faculty of Arts & Science will publish any changes to the Summer Session Timetable.
Please note that examinations for courses listed as online-synchronous will take place online, unless stated otherwise.
PHL100Y1Y – Introduction to Philosophy
Instructors: TBA
Schedule: Mondays 18:00-20:00 and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Mondays 20:00 or Wednesdays 17:00)
Description: An introduction to the central branches of philosophy, such as logic, theory of knowledge, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy. Writings from the central figures in the history of Western and non-Western philosophy, as well as contemporary philosophers, may be considered.
Delivery Method: In-person
PHL210Y1Y – 17th- and 18th-Century Philosophy
Instructors: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays 9:00-12:00 and Thursdays 9:00-11:00 (Tutorials: Thursdays 11:00 or 12:00)
Description: Central texts of such philosophers as Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
PHL217H1S – Introduction to Continental Philosophy
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays 18:00-20:00 and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Mondays 20:00 or Wednesdays 17:00)
Description: An introduction to some of the post-Hegelian thinkers who inspired the various philosophical movements broadly referred to as continental, such as phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction, and post-modernism. Questions include the will, faith, death, existence, history and politics, rationality and its limits, encountering an other. Authors studied may include: Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Heidegger, Sartre.
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
PHL232H1F – Knowledge and Reality
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays 15:00-18:00 and Wednesdays 15:00-17:00 (Tutorials: Wednesdays 17:00 or 18:00)
Description: What is reality fundamentally like? How, if at all, can we reach knowledge, or at least reasonable beliefs, about it? This course is an introduction to the philosophical subfields that offer answers to these questions: metaphysics and epistemology, respectively. We’ll treat such perennial philosophical topics as what precisely knowledge is, whether we can have any reasonable beliefs at all about the world, whether you can prove that a world independent of your mind exists by just holding up your hands, whether time moves, and whether ordinary objects like tables *really* exist. But we’ll also treat more contemporary topics like how encountering people who disagree with you should affect your confidence in your beliefs, when it’s reasonable to believe things based on the testimony of others, how our biases affect who we find trustworthy, and how to think about the foundations of race and gender categories.
Delivery Method: In-person
PHL240H1F – Persons, Minds and Bodies
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays 18:00-20:00 and Thursdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Tuesdays 20:00 or Thursdays 17:00)
Description: Consciousness and its relation to the body; personal identity and survival; knowledge of other minds; psychological events and behaviour.
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
PHL243H1S – Philosophy of Human Sexuality
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 18:00-21:00
Description: Philosophical issues about sex and sexual identity in the light of biological, psychological and ethical theories of sex and gender; the concept of gender; male and female sex roles; perverse sex; sexual liberation; love and sexuality.
Delivery Method: In-person
PHL245H1Y – Modern Symbolic Logic
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays 15:00-18:00
Description: An introduction to formal deductive logic. Semantics, symbolization, and techniques of natural deduction in sentential logic. Symbolization, natural deduction, and models in monadic predicate logic. Symbolization and natural deduction with polyadic predicates. Introduction to advanced concepts in first-order logic, such as operations, identity, and models.
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous (In-person exam)
PHL271H1F – Law and Morality
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays 09:00-12:00 and Wednesdays 09:00-11:00 (Tutorials: Wednesdays 11:00 or 12:00)
Description: Justifications for the legal enforcement of mortality; particular ethical issues arising out of the intersection of law and morality, such as punishment, freedom of expression and censorship, autonomy and paternalism, constitutional protection of human rights.
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
PHL273H1S – Environmental Ethics
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:00-15:00
Description: A study of environmental issues raising questions of concern to moral and political philosophers, such as property rights, responsibility for future generations, and the interaction of human beings with the rest of nature. Typical issues: sustainable development, alternative energy, the preservation of wilderness areas, animal rights.
Delivery Method: In-person
PHL275H1S – Introduction to Ethics
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays 12:00-15:00 and Wednesdays 12:00-14:00 (Tutorials: Wednesdays 14:00 or 15:00)
Description: An introduction to central issues in ethics or moral philosophy, such as the objectivity of values, the nature of moral judgements, rights and duties, the virtues, and consequentialism. Readings may be drawn from a variety of contemporary and historical sources.
Delivery method: In-person
PHL281H1F – Bioethics
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays 18:00-20:00 and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Monday 20:00 and Wednesdays 17:00)
Description: An introduction to the study of moral and legal problems in medical practice and in biomedical research; the development of health policy. Topics include: concepts of health and disease, patient rights, informed consent, allocation of scarce resources, euthanasia, abortion, genetic and reproductive technologies, human research, and mental health.
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
PHL303H1S – Plato
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 18:00-21:00
Description: Selected metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical themes in Plato’s dialogues.
Delivery Method: In-person
PHL322H1F – Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays 9:00-12:00
Description: German and French philosophy after World War II, focusing on such topics as: debates about humanism, hermeneutics, critical theory, the structuralist movement, its successors such as deconstruction. Typical authors: Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Derrida.
Delivery Method: In-person
PHL340H1F – Issues in Philosophy of Mind
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays 13:00-16:00
Description: Typical issues include: the mind-brain identity theory; intentionality and the mental; personal identity.
Delivery Method: In-person
PHL375H1F – Ethics
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 18:00-21:00
Description: An intermediate-level study of selected issues in moral philosophy, or of influential contemporary or historical works in ethical theory.
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
PHL382H1S – Death and Dying
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00
An intermediate-level study of moral and legal problems, including the philosophical significance of death, the high-tech prolongation of life, definition and determination of death, suicide, active and passive euthanasia, the withholding of treatment, palliative care and the control of pain, living wills; recent judicial decisions.
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
PHL388H1F – Literature and Philosophy
Instructor: TBA
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 15:00-18:00
Description: The literary expression of philosophical ideas and the interplay between literature and philosophy. Such philosophical issues as the nature and origin of good and evil in human beings, the nature and extent of human freedom and responsibility, and the diverse forms of linguistic expression. Such authors as Wordsworth, Mill, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Miller, Camus, and Lawrence are studied.
Delivery Method: In-person