300-Level Courses

2023-24 Fall/Winter 300-level courses

Note about Prerequisites:
All 300-series courses have a a general prerequisite of 7.5 courses (in any field) and a prerequisite of three half courses (or equivalent) in philosophy. The courses PHL345H1 to 349H1, PHL354H1, PHL356H1, and PHL357H1 are exempt from the latter rule (the philosophy prerequisite). See a list of specific course prerequisites in the academic calendar of the Faculty of Arts & Science. Students who do not meet the prerequisite for a particular course but believe that they have adequate preparation must obtain the permission of the instructor to gain entry to the course.

PHL301H1F — EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Rachel Barney
Wednesday 15:00-18:00

A study of selected Greek philosophers before Plato. Topics may include the Pre-Socratic natural philosophers, Parmenides and the Eleatics, and the so-called sophistic movement.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL302H1F — ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY AFTER ARISTOTLE

Instructor TBD
Friday 09:00-12:00

A study of selected themes in post-Aristotelian philosophy. Topics may include Stoicism, Epicureanism, Neoplatonism, and various forms of scepticism.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL303H1F — PLATO

Prof. Lloyd Gerson
Monday and Wednesday 13:00-14:30

This course will focus on the various depictions of philosophy and philosophers in Plato’s dialogues.  Socrates appears as Plato’s ideal philosopher. He appears as ‘gadfly’, dialectician, rhetoritician, and erotic expert, among other things.  We will explore all of these ‘roles’ that the character Socrates assumes as well as Plato’s conception of philosophy as a realm of knowledge independent of the natural sciences. We will read selections from many dialogues and several dialogues in their entirety, including Gorgias, Protagoras, and Symposium.

Reading: Selections from Plato. The Complete Works, ed. John Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson (Hackett, 1997).

Evaluation: two essays, term test (20% of final grade); 2,500-3,000 words (20% of final grade); class participation (20% of final grade), final examination (40% of final grade). The penalty for late essays without a written medical certificate is 3 marks per day (weekends included).

PHL304H1S — ARISTOTLE

Prof. Lloyd Gerson
Monday and Wednesday 13:00-14:30

The topic of this course is Aristotle’s “anthropology, ” that is, his many-sided account of human nature or of the human person. We will    consider in what sense human beings can be a subject of scientific investigation and how “human sciences” do or do not differ from “natural sciences.” We will also investigate Aristotle’s account of human cognition, human action, and emotions. We will conclude with a brief look at Aristotle’s account of a human being as a “political animal.”

Reading: Aristotle. Selected Works. Third Edition. Hippocrates G. Apostle and Lloyd P. Gerson. Translations. The Peripatetic Press, 1991.

Evaluation: Two essays, 2,000-2,500 words, each worth 30%; final, faculty scheduled  examination, worth 30%; class participation,     worth  10%. The penalty for late essays unaccompanied by a written medical excuse is 3 marks per 24 hour period or fraction thereof.

PHL307H1S — AUGUSTINE

Prof. Peter King
Monday and Wednesdays 10:30-12:00

Central themes in St. Augustine’s Christian philosophy, such as the problem of evil, the interior way to God, the goal of human life and the meaning of history.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL310H1S — THE RATIONALISTS

Prof. Michael Rosenthal
Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:00-13:30

This course will examine how early modern philosophers understood the nature of evil and suffering. We will explore the medieval background to the early modern debates on evil, briefly examining key sources such as Augustine, Aquinas, and a few of their later interpreters. We will then consider how some of rationalists—like Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche—understood the problem.  But we will also read some less well-known figures like Ann Conway and thinkers who were far more skeptical—like Blaise Pascal and Pierre Bayle.  In the last part of the course, we will read the debates among eighteenth century philosophers, some of whom mocked the pretensions of the rationalists, such as Voltaire, and others, including Rousseau and Kant, who attempted a new explanation of evil that focused less on God and more on human nature.

Evaluation:  Weekly discussion Questions (20%); a midterm paper (35%); participation (10%); and a final exam (35%).

PHL311H1F — THE EMPIRICISTS

Prof. Brian Bitar
Wednesday 18:00-21:00

This course examines conceptions of the passions in the empiricist line of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers. What precisely is a passion or emotion? Are passions constituted by feelings, perceptions, drives, beliefs, or evaluative judgments? Do they belong to the mind or body or some mixture? How clearly can we know and distinguish passions within ourselves and others? Are the passions one or many—are the different emotions typically discerned in experience distinct, or ultimately reducible to forms of one unified passion or desire? What is the relation of emotion to reason and will in human consciousness and action? Are some or all passions good or bad—what is their place in ethics or moral psychology? Does reason order and regulate the passions, or do the passions guide reason? In what sense are passions social or intersubjective? How may empiricism involve an increased centrality and affirmation of the passions in philosophical psychology?

After looking briefly at medieval sources in Augustine and Aquinas, we will consider Descartes’ avowedly new account in Passions of the Soul, a modern starting point in the commonly termed rationalist line. We will explore empiricist responses and development of the concept of the passions principally in Hobbes’s Elements of Law and Leviathan and Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, with further passages from Elisabeth of Bohemia, Locke, Hutcheson, and Smith.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL314H1F — KANT

Prof. Arthur Ripstein
Tuesdays 12:00-15:00

The Critique of Pure Reason is one of the seminal works of Western philosophy. Kant undertakes what he describes as a “Copernican Revolution,” providing an alternative to what he sees as the “dogmatism” of traditional rationalist metaphysics, and the “skepticism” of empiricism. His critical alternative claims to reconcile scientific knowledge with the possibility of morality and freedom. The Critique does all of this through an engagement with fundamental topics ranging from the philosophy of mathematics, the nature of space and time, through the nature of explanation, as well as questions in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, and the metaphysics of freedom.

Text: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge, 1998), You must get the Guyer/Wood translation.

Evaluation (tentative): One 1000-word paper (20%) due late October; one 2000-word paper due
Late November; final examination (40%).

PHL317H1S — MARX AND MARXISM

Instructor: TBD
Fridays 15:00-18:00

An examination of some of the leading themes in the philosophy of Karl Marx. Developments of Marxist philosophy by later thinkers, and critics of Marxism, may also be considered.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL320H1S — PHENOMENOLOGY

Prof. Tarek Dika
Fridays 12:00-15:00

This course is an introduction to phenomenology, a philosophical movement founded by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) in the early twentieth century and practiced well into the present. The aim of phenomenology is to solve philosophical problems by grounding all philosophical demonstrations in the phenomena themselves as they are given in experience. Husserl’s students in Germany and those influenced by Husserl’s philosophy in France criticized Husserl and took phenomenology in interesting new directions, which will also be explored in this course. Readings include texts by Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Stein, and some contemporary phenomenologists.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL323H1F — SOCIAL AND CULTURAL THEORY

Prof. Natalie Helberg
Wednesdays 15:00-18:00

Topic: The Neoliberal University

We will engage in a philosophical consideration of the contemporary university, the ‘neoliberal’ university. We will consider the features of this iteration of the university and their relation to the injunctions of neoliberal capitalism as well as alternative historical configurations of the university which will serve to highlight the contingency of these features. The class will be self-reflexive in various ways: It will be an occasion to reflect on our own positions and possibilities within the institution that houses the class (we will also reflect in a more general way on the different positions available within the neoliberal university—that of student, professor, administrator, etc.—and the possibilities that attend them). We will also reflect on what philosophy in particular has to offer to practices of resisting or mindfully navigating the negative dimensions of the neoliberal university. Our readings will be drawn from Bill Readings’ The University in Ruins, Fred Moten’s The Undercommons, Derrida’s The Eyes of the University, Sara Ahmed’s On Being Included and will also include essay-length texts by Kant, Fichte, Humboldt, Schiller, Schleiermacher, Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, and Bourdieu.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL325H1F — EARLY ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Cheryl Misak
Tuesday 11:00-13:00

Delivery Method: In-person every Tuesday, in addition to asynchronous lectures

This course will examine of some of the classic texts of early analytic philosophy, covering Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ramsey, Carnap, and C.I. Lewis.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: Two in-class exams

PHL327H1S — ETHICS AND RELIGION IN SANSKRIT PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Alessandro Graheli
Thursday 15:00-18:00

The Ineffability of Moral Laws

The Veda is the sacred scripture of the Hindus and its main teaching is purportedly dharma (“moral duty”), which is by definition an intangible concept that cannot be learned without a spiritual authority. Natural languages are typically learned through the observation and imitation of the linguistic exchanges of competent speakers. This process of linguistic acquisition, however, can work only when the denotation of words and sentences concerns objects of real experience. Sacred scriptures, by contrast, present the problem that their content is typically spiritual and ineffable. Therefore the morality of the Veda cannot be learned.

This powerful argument, meant to undermine the very foundation of the Veda, was raised by Buddhists authors against the proponents of the traditional Sanskrit sciences of Linguistics, Hermeneutics, Epistemology and Logic, who in turn developed their own counterarguments. The course will assess the rational merits of the respective standpoints in their historical framework.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL328H1F — METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY IN SANSKRIT PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Jonardon Ganeri

Delivery Method: Online-Asynchronous

This course will examine the key philosophical issues, questions, topics, and thinkers from the first 1000 years of the history of philosophy in India, roughly the period from 500BCE to 500CE. The emphasis will be on the nature of indigenous styles of reasoning in the South Asian subcontinent, and particular attention will be given to the idea that philosophy in Ancient India took place in a cosmopolitan intellectual world in which an astonishing plurality of different ideas were able to flourish.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL329H1F — TOPICS IN 20th CENTURY CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Natalie Helberg
Tuesdays and Thursdays 15:00-16:30

Topic: Continental Biopolitical Theory

‘Biopolitics’ (or ‘biopower’) refers to contemporary, internally-heterogeneous networks of power which target populations, attempting to manage their characteristics and make them usable in various ways. As a means to these ends, biopower also sets out to administer or control the lives (the health, the energies, the possibilities for being, the affects) and deaths (the nature and circumstances of these deaths, the acceptability of these deaths, the dignity of these deaths) of the individual bodies of which populations are composed. In this course, we will explore thinking on the subject of biopolitics developed within the continental tradition. We will read lengthy selections from Michel Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended and The Birth of Biopolitics, from Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, from Jacques Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign (Volume 1), Life Death and The Death Penalty (Volume 1), and from Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim. Some of the questions we will consider as we study the relationships between these different discourses on biopolitics include: What is biopower’s relation to the concept of sovereignty? Are there sovereign agents of biopower? To what extent is resistance to biopower the affair of sovereign individuals? What happens to biopolitical thinking when we deconstruct the concepts derived from the life sciences which animate biopolitics? Are there significant differences in the ways genealogical and deconstructive methods intervene in the domain of the biopolitical?

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL331H1F — METAPHYSICS

TBD
Mondays 12:00-15:00

Historical and systematic approaches to topics in metaphysics, such as the nature of reality, substance and existence, necessity and possibility, causality, universals and particulars.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL332H1S — EPISTEMOLOGY

Prof. David Barnett
Monday and Friday 15:00-16:30

Historical and systematic approaches to topics in the theory of knowledge, such as truth, belief, justification, perception, a priori knowledge, certitude, skepticism, other minds.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL333H1S — PUZZLES AND PARADOXES

Prof. Michael Caie
Mondays and Wednesdays 12:00-13:30

Time travel, truth, infinity, rational decision making: each of these topics gives rise to philosophical puzzles and paradoxes. In this class we’ll consider a variety of such paradoxes. Using logic and other philosophical tools, we’ll show how these paradoxes can lead to deep and important philosophical conclusions.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL335H1S — ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Prof. Elisa Freschi
Mondays 15:00-18:00

This course will discuss topics, schools and figures in philosophy of religion through a specific focus on three connected topics, namely divine omnipresence, heavenly life and the role of rituals and the philosophy thereof. We will read texts (in their English translation) spanning from Medieval Christianity and pre-colonial Sanskrit philosophy, to contemporary analytic philosophy, and I will introduce you to the main topics thinkers particularly dealt with while discussing divine omnipresence etc. Besides the reading assignments, we will also discuss philosophy of religion through movies and short stories, as well as analyse primary texts in class.

Evaluation: 24% (reading assignments); 18% (at least 9 weekly written assignments); 12% (at least 9 weekly peer reviews); 4% (summary of a talk); 24% (in-class participation); 18% (final paper).

Readings: Omnipresence: Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism; Eleanor Stump, Omnipresence, Indwelling and the Second-Personal; Hud Hudson, Omnipresence; Mark Johnston, Is there a problem about persistence?; Richard LaCroix, Aquinas’ on God’s Omnipresence and Timelessness; Inman Ross, Omnipresence and the Location of the Immaterial; Josh Parsons, Theories of Location; Jonardon Ganeri Raghunātha Śiromaṇi and the Origins of Modernity in India; Claudio Calosi, Extended Simples, Unextended Complexes.

Heavenly life: Elisa Freschi, The multisensorial experience of Vaikuṇṭha in Veṅkaṭanātha’s works.

Philosophy of rituals: tbd. We will certainly discuss Andrej Tarkovskij’s The Sacrifice (movie, 1986).

PHL336H1S — ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Deborah Black
Tuesdays and Thursdays 13:30-15:00

Delivery Method: Online Synchronous

An introduction to the major thinkers in classical Islamic philosophy, with emphasis placed on developing a properly philosophical understanding of the issues and arguments. Topics include the existence of God; creation and causality; human nature and knowledge; the nature of ethical obligations; and the constitution of the ideal political state.

PHL338H1F — JEWISH PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Michael Rosenthal
Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:00-13:30

The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of some of the central questions and themes in Jewish thought and philosophy. After having discussed the problem of the relation between reason and revelation, we shall proceed topically, examining such central issues as proofs for the existence of God, the nature of miracles, the problems of free will and evil, the nature of Jewish identity, the role of Israel in Jewish life, and questions of Jewish ethics and politics. We will discuss many canonical texts and modern critiques of these views. We will ask whether catastrophic modern events, such as the Holocaust, might force us to re-evaluate the answers to central philosophical questions of religious belief formulated in earlier times. We will focus on the role of reason in Jewish life but also consider skeptical perspectives such as mysticism and gender critiques.

Evaluation: Weekly discussion Questions (20%); a midterm paper (35%); participation (10%); and a final exam (35%).

Instructor: TBD
Friday 09:00-12:00

Typical issues include: the mind-brain identity theory; intentionality and the mental; personal identity.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL341H1F — FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY AND HUMAN ACTION

Prof. Martin Pickave
Monday and Wednesday 12:00-13:30

It is a common view that responsibility presupposes freedom; that we are only responsible for those actions we were free to perform or not to perform. But what exactly does it mean to be free to do or not to do something? Do we really always have a capacity to do otherwise, and if so, in what sense do we have such a capacity? Or isn’t human action rather determined (by beliefs and desires or even by the material processes in the brain)? Maybe freedom is after all an illusion? These issues and other related topics will be the subject of this course. In examining some of the traditional answers to the questions above we will also address some core notions of moral psychology: motivation, volition, reasons for action, and weakness of will.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL341H1S — FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY AND HUMAN ACTION

Prof. Matthew Scarfone
Tuesdays and Thursdays 15:00-16:30

Human action, and the nature of freedom and responsibility in the light of contemporary knowledge concerning the causation of behaviour.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL342H1S — MINDS AND MACHINES

Prof. Sara Aronowitz
Wednesdays 15:00-17:00

This course will ask: what do computers and minds/brains have in common and how are they different?  We’ll cover contemporary readings from philosophy, computer science, and other cognitive science fields. No programming experience is assumed but assignments will include introductory programming in MatLab, and more traditional philosophical writing.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL344H1F — PHILOSOPHY OF EMOTIONS

Instructor: TBA
Wednesdays 09:00-12:00

Delivery Method: In-person

A survey of philosophical topics related to the emotions, from a range of philosophical perspectives. Questions to be considered may include the following: What exactly is an emotion? Are emotions feelings? What emotions are there, and how are they shaped by culture and society? How are emotions related to reason, the brain and the body? What role do — and should — the emotions play in decision-making? Can an emotion be morally right or wrong, and what makes it so?

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL345H1F — INTERMEDIATE LOGIC

Prof. Franz Huber
Mondays 18:00-21:00

Intermediate Logic is a first introduction to some of the philosophically significant results of metalogic. It presupposes that you have taken a course in elementary logic such as PHL245, but nothing else besides – except for a willingness to acquire the skill of proving. We will work with the first two parts of the following textbook by Richard Zach: Intermediate Logic: An Open Introduction (openlogicproject.org)

In the first month we will get familiar with the basic mathematics that is needed for the study of logic. This includes a discussion of sets, relations, and functions, as well as a bit about arithmetic and the size of sets.

In the second month we will be occupied with the syntax and semantics of first order logic with identity, as well as its model theory and proof theory (the latter in the form of so-called “natural deduction”). Chief among the proof techniques we will study is mathematical induction.

In the third month we will work through a proof of the soundness and completeness of first order logic with identity, as well as closely related results such as the compactness and Löwenheim-Skolem theorems. We will not cover incompleteness, which is the focus of PHL445.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: The course is entirely problem focused. There will be two exams consisting of select problems from a longer list of problems that you will be given at the beginning of the course.

PHL349H1S — SET THEORY

Instructor: TBA
Fridays 9:00-12:00

Delivery Method: In-person

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL351H1F — PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Prof. Imogen Dickie
Wednesdays 12:00-15:00

The nature of language as a system of human communication, theories of meaning and meaningfulness, the relation of language to the world and to the human mind.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL354H1S — PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS

Prof. Eamon Darnell
Thursday 09:00-12:00

Platonism versus nominalism, the relation between logic and mathematics, implications of Gödel’s theorem, formalism and intuitionism.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL355H1F — PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL SCIENCE

Prof. Alex Koo
Tuesdays 9:00-11:00; Fridays 10:00-11:00

This course will explore some key debates in the philosophy of science that can broadly be grouped under epistemic and metaphysical issues.

Epistemic issues include questions on what the status of our scientific theories are and what our state of belief in them should be. Is the aim of science to generate true theories? Or merely useful ones? Should we believe that our best scientific theories are true, or approximately true? Or is such a belief philosophically suspect? What makes science, science? Answers to these questions critically impact our views on what our universe is fundamentally like.

Metaphysical issues include questions on the nature of some of the most fundamental concepts and entities utilized in science. What is the nature of causation? What does it mean to be a law of nature? What is a scientific explanation of a fact? Some of these questions date back thousands of years, but modern philosophy of science has provided new insights and ways of analyzing these central metaphysical questions.

This course is designed around pre-reading. A week will begin with a pre-reading lecture where we will situate the weekly topic and cover all background information needed to understand the reading. Students will do the reading over several days and we will finish the week with a discussion heavy post-reading class. A short weekly writing assignment will wrap-up our week.

Readings: A selection of primary sources made available online.

Evaluation: Weekly reading assignments, weekly writing assignments, three medium length essays.

PHL356H1F — PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS

Prof. Mike Miller
Tuesdays 15:00-18:00

Introduction to philosophical issues which arise in modern physics, especially in relativity and quantum mechanics. This course will be accessible to students without a significant background in physics, but with an interest in the philosophical challenges that modern physics poses.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL357H1S — PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY

Prof. Denis Walsh
Fridays 09:00-12:00

Philosophical issues in the foundations of biology, e.g., the nature of life, evolutionary theory; controversies about natural selection; competing mechanisms, units of selection; the place of teleology in biology; biological puzzles about sex and sexual reproduction; the problem of species; genetics and reductionism; sociobiology; natural and artificial life.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL366H1S — TOPICS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Brian Bitar
Mondays 09:00-12:00

This course examines the concept of the conscience and its relation to political community especially in the modern liberal order. What is meant by the conscience from its classical and biblical origins to its Christian development as a central term of moral self-understanding to its secular or secularized forms? The conscience may be seen broadly as an inner, reflexive source of moral self-awareness, knowledge, motivation, or assessment. It has played the roles of witness, oracle, accuser and accused, judge and judged, torturer and liberator. More precisely, does the conscience disclose essentially negative, guilty self-reproach or warning against one’s own evil, or also positive direction or illumination of good? Is it autonomous, or grounded on an external principle whether rational, divine, or customary? In terms of faculties, is the conscience composed of reason, intuition, will, emotions, or a power of its own? Is it attuned to intention or action? In what sense is the conscience subjective or objective, absolute or relative, eternal or historical, fallible or infallible?

What is the place of radically individual conscience within political community and state authority? We will look at political critiques and defences of conscience; arguments for freedom of conscience; related cases for toleration and diversity; conscience in the distinctions of private vs. public realms, church vs. state authorities; conscientious objection and civil authority. Finally, does private conscience speak on shared political decision and action? Or can the notion of conscience be rendered politically as communal or public conscience? Readings from such authors as Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Hobbes, Bayle, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Arendt, and Martin Luther King.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL367H1F — PHILOSOPHY OF FEMINISM

Prof. Simona Vucu
Tuesday and Thursday 13:30-15:00

Delivery Method: In-person

In this course, we will examine some key issues in contemporary feminist philosophy. We will start with a discussion of such central concepts of feminist philosophy as identity, oppression, and intersectionality. The rest of the course will be spent on what feminist philosophers have to say about work and family, violence against women, the social construction of bodies, and cultural differences. The aim of the course is to track how attention to different dimensions of social reality (sexual identity, race/ethnicity, class, nationality) can enrich old philosophical questions and raise new ones.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: Weekly quizzes: 10%; Two essays: 50%; Final examination (possibly take-home format) 30%; Class participation: 10%.

PHL369H1S — PHILOSOPHY OF RACE, GENDER AND CAPITALISM

Prof. William Paris
Wednesdays 12:00-15:00

What is “capitalism” and how did it come to be? How should our understanding of capitalism be shaped by the realities of racial domination and gender oppression? What are the different accounts of justice and injustice that would emerge from trying to think these three phenomena together? Or are they really one phenomena? This course will survey the complex historical and contemporary debates concerning the specificities and interrelationships between race, gender, and capitalism. We will engage social theory, philosophy of history, phenomenology, intersectionality, and Marxist philosophy. Students will gain a rich understanding of the diverse theoretical tools one needs in order to grasp our complex social reality.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL370H1F — ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

Prof. David Dyzenhaus
Mondays and Wednesdays 12:00-15:00

Citizens and the Law

We will focus in this course on theories of the legitimacy of judicial review and its role in democracy. Should unelected judges be given the role of interpreting the laws made by the democratically elected legislature in light of their understanding of the constitutional commitments of their society? Should they have the authority to invalidate laws that they consider violate those commitments? And, if judges have that role and that authority, what theory of interpretation should they employ? We will start with an introduction to the contemporary debate. We will then move back in time to a precursor to that debate in the 1930s in Germany about who should be the ‘guardian of the constitution’ between Hans Kelsen, perhaps the leading philosopher of law of all time, and Carl Schmitt, the fascist legal theorist whose thought is influential today. Finally, we will examine the theory of ‘common good constitutionalism’, a set of responses from the right of the political spectrum to the questions above which seems to be attracting ever more adherents, including in Canada.

Readings: all available electronically through the library.

Evaluation: Class participation, 10%; short paper on the contemporary debate (due early October), 20%; longer paper on Kelsen/Schmitt (due after reading week), 30%; longer paper on common good constitutionalism (due last day of term), 40%. Note that the second paper will build on the first and the third on both the first and the second. You will thus be able to rely on work done earlier in the term in the later assignments.

PHL373H1S — ISSUES IN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Prof. Steven Coyne
Mondays 18:00-21:00

Ecofeminism

Ecofeminists argue for two claims. First, we cannot properly understand why environmental degradation is wrong without framing it in terms of oppression or domination of the environment. Second, environmental domination or oppression are themselves linked to the way that men dominate or oppress women. In this course, we will distinguish several versions of these claims, evaluate them, and attempt to bolster them in light of contemporary work on power, standpoint epistemology, and care ethics. We will also consider how ecofeminism relates to another radical criticism of standard environmental ethics, deep ecology.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: two ~750-word papers (20% each, 40% total), one take-home final (40%), five in-class written reflections (2% each, 10% total), participation (10%)

PHL375H1F — ETHICS

Prof. Brendan DeKenessey
Wednesday and Thursdays 13:30-15:00

Doing Good: Consequentialism in Ethics

Here’s a simple ethical theory: you should always do whatever will produce the most good. This view, called consequentialism, is both one of the most influential theories in moral philosophy and one of the most reviled. This course will undertake a sustained investigation of consequentialism. Topics include: the extent of our obligations to help strangers in need; whether it is ever permissible to kill in the name of the greater good; whether we can know the long-term consequences of our actions; whether goodness is objective or subjective; whether all moral theories are consequentialist theories in disguise; and more.

Readings: TBA

Evaluations: TBA

PHL375H1S ETHICS

Prof. Reza Hadisi
Thursdays 09:00-12:00

In this course, we will undertake a critical examination of contemporary iterations of Aristotelian virtue ethics. We will start with some preparatory sessions on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. We will then explore contemporary Aristotelianism in the writings of Julia Annas, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Martha Nussbaum.

Evaluation Method: In-class midterm, Short Argument Maps, and in-person exam

PHL376H1S — TOPICS IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Matthew Scarfone
Mondays 18:00-21:00

A focused examination of a selected issue in moral philosophy.

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL377H1S — ETHICAL ISSUES IN BIG DATA

Prof. Boris Babic
Tuesdays 15:00-18:00

An introduction to the ethical dimensions arising in the practice of statistics and data science, including moral puzzles, problems and dilemmas that arise in the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to every day decision making in politics, business, and ordinary life.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL381H1F — ETHICS AND MEDICAL RESEARCH

Prof. Cheryl Misak
Mondays 12:00-15:00

This course will examine ethical issues in medical research. Topics include:

• Is it unethical to subject the participants in a clinical trial to the unknown risks of the intervention?
• innovation versus risk
• research leading to more virulent pathogenicity and lab leaks
• informed voluntary consent in research contexts
• randomized clinical trials and evidence-based medicine

Readings: TBA

Evaluation: responses to readings/guest lectures; one in-class exam

PHL382H1F — DEATH AND DYING

Prof. Jennifer Gibson
Thursday 3:00-6:00

An intermediate-level study of moral and legal problems, including the philosophical significance of death, the high-tech prolongation of life, the 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.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL383H1S — ETHICS AND MENTAL HEALTH

Prof. Jack Beaulieu
Tuesday 18:00-21:00

This course will be about using the tools of analytic metaphysics and epistemology to think carefully about mental health. For instance, medical models of health and disability frame disparate conditions such as depression and autism exclusively as disorders to be treated by medical intervention. But this framing belies the complex etiology of depression, the prevalence of which is on the rise due to deteriorating economic and social factors; and it ignores the testimony of autistic persons, who argue that changes to external structures, not medical intervention, are what they need to flourish. Drawing on recent work on the metaphysics of disability will allow us to parse distinctions between the apparently homogeneous category of disorders and to think more carefully about the ethics of treatment and intervention. Similarly, drawing on recent work about testimonial and hermeneutic injustice will help us understand the distinctive wrongs that occur when medical professionals fail to listen to the testimony of patients and when individuals lack the concepts to make sense of their own experience. Readings will be drawn from analytic philosophy, empirical literature, and activist literature.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL384H1S — ETHICS, GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION

Prof. Jennifer Gibson
Thursday 3:00-6:00

An intermediate-level study of moral and legal problems, including the ontological and moral status of the human embryo and fetus; human newborn, carrier and prenatal genetic screening for genetic defect, genetic therapy; reproductive technologies (e.g., artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization); recent legislative proposals and judicial decisions.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL385H1F — AESTHETICS

Prof. Mark Kingwell
Wednesdays  12:00-15:00

The aim of this course is to consider the unique challenge of encountering Self and Other under the doubled sign of ‘familiar strangeness’, using cinema as a mechanism of investigation. Key tropes to be investigated include the nature of observation, the leakiness and vulnerability of the human body, the ontology of film, and the epistemological predicament of the detective or investigator within fictional frames.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA

PHL388H1S — LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

TBD
Tuesdays 12:00-15:00

An examination of the interplays and tensions between literature and philosophy. Possible themes include: the ‘literary’ expression of philosophical ideas; the ancient ‘quarrel of the poets and philosophers’; the relation of form to content in philosophical writing, and the immense variety of philosophical genres (e.g. aphorism, essai, confession, treatise, dialogue, manifesto, meditation, etc.); the philosophical content and significance of certain ‘literary’ works and forms; and philosophical problems regarding translation, adaptation, and interpretation. Topics and texts will vary according to instructor.

Reading: TBA

Evaluation: TBA