The following courses will be offered for the 2024 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 University’s Timetable Builder website.
PHL100Y1Y – Introduction to Philosophy
Instructors: Andriy Bilenkyy (f-term) and Vincent Lee (s-term)
Schedule: Mondays 18:00-20:00 and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Mondays 20:00 or Wednesdays 17:00)
Delivery Method: Online-Synchronous (This course will have a in-person mid-term and final exam.)
Description:
F-Term: This part of PHL100 takes up several topics of central interest to philosophers and covers several historically influential positions on these topics. It focuses on three groups of topics: (i) the right and the good; (ii) knowledge and reality; (iii) minds and bodies. It covers positions on these topics presented by philosophers belonging to the Ancient Chinese, Classical Greek, Ancient South Asian, Classical Arabic and Medieval Jewish philosophical traditions. This part of the course doesn’t just aim to tell you what topics philosophers of the past were interested in and how they tackled them. It also aims to help you acquire some of the tools which will facilitate your future engagement with philosophy and with the basic questions of human life that philosophy focuses on. Hence, lectures and tutorials will include components dedicated to philosophy’s exegetical, argumentative, and communicative tools.
S-Term: This course is an introduction to key traditions, figures, and themes in the global history of philosophy. It explores some of the most fundamental questions that have been asked, in a variety of ways. What is the good life? Who should rule? What am I? What is there? What can we know and how can we know it? Why be moral? And how do all these questions bear on one another? We will deal with key concepts and questions that animated these traditions and figures individually as well as overarching concepts and questions shared between all of them. This course will also provide an opportunity for reflecting on broader meta-issues, including but not limited to, the formation of the philosophical canon and the purpose or significance of philosophical inquiry.
PHL200Y1Y – Ancient Philosophy
Instructors: TBD
Schedule: Tuesdays 9:00-12:00 and Thursdays 9:00-11:00 (Tutorials: Thursdays 11:00 or 12:00)
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
Description: Central texts of the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, and post-Aristotelian philosophy.
PHL217H1S – Introduction to Continental Philosophy
Instructor: TBD
Schedule: Mondays 18:00-20:00 and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Mondays 20:00 or Wednesdays 17:00)
Delivery Method: TBD
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.
Evaluation: TBD
PHL232H1F – Knowledge and Reality
Instructor: Vincent Lee
Schedule: Mondays 15:00-18:00 and Wednesdays 15:00-17:00 (Tutorials: Wednesdays 17:00 or 18:00)
Delivery Method: In-person
Description: This course is an introduction to key themes in epistemology and metaphysics, drawing from classical and contemporary philosophers around the world. It explores some of the most fundamental questions that have been asked, in a variety of ways. Does the external world exist? What justifies knowledge? How do we know that there are causal relations? Do persons and ordinary objects exist? Is there free will? After learning some central concepts and arguments from the first two-thirds of the course, we will apply them to three specific case studies: virtual minds, social categories, and nothingness.
Readings: A selection of contemporary philosophical papers, with occasional historical texts.
Evaluation: Attendance and participation (20%), weekly in-class response papers (50%), final exam (30%)
PHL240H1F – Persons, Minds and Bodies
Instructor: Cameron Yetman
Schedule: Tuesdays 18:00-20:00 and Thursdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Tuesdays 20:00 or Thursdays 17:00)
Delivery Method: In-person
Description: This course explores the nature of persons, minds, and bodies through close reading of classic and contemporary papers in metaphysics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. Questions to be addressed include: What is a person? What does it mean for a person to act? What is the connection between having a mind and having a body? Can we extend our minds outside of our bodies? Can AI systems have minds? How can technology alter or enhance our minds? By the end of the course, you should understand what these questions are really about, what kinds of answers have been given, and maybe even how you think they ought to be answered. You will also get the chance to hone your skills at analytical thinking, reading, and writing through tutorials, exercises, workshops, and assessments.
PHL243H1S – Philosophy of Human Sexuality
Instructor: David Rattray
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 18:00-21:00
Delivery Method: Online-Synchronous
Description: This course is an introduction to philosophical issues about sexuality, as well as related concepts like gender and love. Some of our discussion will examine the metaphysics of sex, gender, and love. What is sex? Is gender socially constructed? What are the differences between love and friendship? The rest of our discussion will be about normative issues. What’s the difference between being flirtatious and creepy? Is consent all there is to an ethical sexual or romantic relationship? What are the political aspects, if any, of sexuality and love?
PHL245H1Y – Modern Symbolic Logic
Instructor: Andrew Lavigne
Schedule: Tuesdays 15:00-18:00
Delivery Method: In-person
This is an introductory course in first-order logic. We will cover the syntax and semantics of propositional and first order logic. We will begin by learning to regiment natural language into sentential logic before learning about decision procedures and methods of proof, which we then apply to the study of quantified predicate logic. Students will come away from the class with a working understanding of logical formalisms and methods of proof, as well as experience in applying these tools to arguments in natural language. Our aim is to learn to detect important logical properties like consistency, validity, and soundness in the unregimented arguments we find in the wilderness outside the logic classroom.
Evaluation: TBD
PHL271H1F – Law and Morality
Instructor: Alex Drusda
Schedule: Mondays 09:00-12:00 and Wednesdays 09:00-11:00 (Tutorials: Wednesdays 11:00 or 12:00)
Delivery Method: Online-Synchronous (This course will have an in-person final exam during the June Exam period).
Description: What is the relationship between the law and morality? Both prescribe and prohibit certain actions. Yet their prescriptions and prohibitions often diverge: there are actions that are plausibly legal yet immoral (breaking informal promises), and actions that are plausibly moral yet illegal (certain forms of nonviolent protest). In this course, we will consider what, if any, relationship nonetheless obtains between law and morality. We will look to various subjects, including legal positivism, the aim of punishment, feminist critiques of the law, and civil disobedience, while keeping a close eye on how law and morality intersect in each.
Evaluation: TBD
PHL273H1S – Environmental Ethics
Instructor: Nate Oppel
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:00-15:00
Delivery Method: Online-Synchronous (In-person Final Exam)
Description: It is widely accepted that climate change and animal agriculture cause incredible amounts of harm. However, these phenomena are the result of the actions of billions of people, so it is hard to see what difference the action of one person makes. That is, it is hard to see why we are, as individuals, obligated to reduce our contribution to climate change and animal agriculture. In this class, we will consider whether you, as an individual, have an obligation to limit your greenhouse gas emissions and your consumption of animal products. Related questions will include “do non-human animals have moral status?” and “who ought to pay for climate change.
PHL275H1S – Introduction to Ethics
Instructor: Ian Campbell
Schedule: Mondays 12:00-15:00 and Wednesdays 12:00-14:00 (Tutorials: Wednesdays 14:00 or 15:00)
Delivery method: In-person
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.
PHL281H1F – Bioethics
Instructor: Ian Campbell
Schedule: Mondays 18:00-20:00 and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00 (Tutorials: Monday 20:00 and Wednesdays 17:00)
Delivery Method: In-person
Description: This course surveys ethical and political issues related to the practice of medicine, medical research, and public health. After establishing a foundation of basic moral theory, the course considers a range of ethical problems arising in the bioethical domain, such as the moral permissibility of abortion, physician assisted death, how to distribute scarce medical resources, and whether access to healthcare should be restricted based on responsibility considerations.
Though these issues are examined from a philosophical lens, the aim of this course is not only to provide students with a philosophical perspective. In addition to being able to identify the morally relevant features of cases we consider, students will be expected to translate these considerations into concrete courses of action. Thus, this course is oriented to both students with a philosophical interest in bioethics as well as future healthcare workers and medical professionals.
PHL303H1S – Plato
Instructor: Ismael Kettani
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 18:00-21:00
Delivery Method: Online-Synchronous
Description: Selected metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical themes in Plato’s dialogues.
PHL329H1F – Topics in 20th Century Continental Philosophy
Institutions in Recent Continental Philosophy
Instructor: Prof. Matthew Delhey
Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays 9:00-12:00
Delivery Method: Online-Synchronous (This course will have an in-person final exam in June).
Description: This course examines the concept(s) of institutions in Continental philosophy today. To do so, we will read two books that take institutions as their principal subject: Freedom’s Right by Axel Honneth and The Institutions of Meaning by Vincent Descombes. In addition to understanding and evaluating each book’s argument on its own terms, we will also address comparative questions: what are institutions, and why have they become so central within Continental philosophy? Is there a single concept of institutions in this tradition, or are there diverse and independent concepts at play, such that our authors are really speaking past one another? If there is a univocal concept of institutions, why should it be the unit of social critique or the mark of the mental instead of smaller-scale phenomena, like norms and practices, or larger-scale ones, such as forms of life? By considering these questions, students will be introduced to today’s most pressing debates in Continental social philosophy. This course has an in-person final exam.
Evaluations: TBD
PHL375H1F – Ethics
Instructor: Bowen Chan
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 18:00-21:00
Delivery Method: In-person
Description: An intermediate-level study of selected issues in moral philosophy, or of influential contemporary or historical works in ethical theory.
PHL382H1S – Death and Dying
Instructor: Schuyler Pringle
Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays 18:00-21:00
Delivery Method: Online-synchronous
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.
PHL388H1S – Literature and Philosophy
Instructor: Andriy Bilenkyy
Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays 15:00-18:00
Delivery Method: In-person
Description: This is an intermediate-level overview of several topics central to the contemporary philosophy of literature, with a particular focus the nature of literary fiction and its connection to narrative and imagination. We will examine several influential accounts of the nature of fiction; consider the purported connection between fiction, narrative, and imagination; review its apparent explanatory benefits; and assess the recent pushback against this connection. Readings in philosophy will cover established accounts by McDonald, Lewis, Walton, Currie, Lamarque and Moran, and the more recent takes by Gendler, Friend, Camp and others. Weekly readings in philosophy will be supplemented by short stories and excerpts from novels by modern and contemporary authors, including Ondaatje, Morrison, Joyce, O’Connor, Lu Xun, Bashevis Singer, Han Kang, and others.
Readings: TBD
Evaluation: TBD