Introduction to Philosophy: Learning the Art of Close Reading. Proceeding historically and sampling a few of the great works in Western philosophy, this course will introduce you to some deep and enduring philosophical questions, including: What are the ultimate foundations of reality? What is being? What is love? What does it mean to be human? How should I live? Can knowledge make me happy? What is the good life? What is the good death? What is the relationship between being and time? What is justice? Which political arrangement is best? What is enlightenment? What effects are science and technology having on our world? What does it mean to think? What is freedom? What are the necessary preconditions and consequences of freedom? What is the meaning of life? How has the answer to this question changed during the course of Western history? The interconnected goals of the course include introducing you to the Western philosophical tradition, initiating you to the art of close philosophical reading, developing your skills in critical writing and argumentation, and, in all these ways, encouraging your thoughtful engagement with the world. Course requirements: This course will require you to read, understand, and come to terms with a variety of challenging philosophical texts and issues. To facilitate your digestion of some difficult material, I shall require course attendance (which will be enforced through easy, in-class pop quizzes worth 10% of your grade), two thoughtful, high-quality philosophy papers (worth 30% of your grade each), and an open-book, comprehensive final exam (worth 30% of your grade).

Course texts: Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy; Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays; Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life; Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking; Sartre, Essays in Existentialism; and Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education.

Can we know that God exists? If God exists, then why is there evil in the world? What is the relation between mind and body? Since I am not able to see your thoughts, how do I know that you have a mind? Can science explain consciousness? Can a computer be a mind? What kind of thing is a person? How am I the same person that ‘I’ was in my childhood? (I don’t look or behave like that child.) Does free will exist? Is it compatible with a scientific view of the world? Are there any grounds for morality? We’ll take this kind of topical approach to some of the most difficult and interesting questions in philosophy.

Text: Perry and Bratman, eds., Introduction to Philosophy, 5th ed.

8-Week Courses (1st half of Fall semester): August 22, 2011- October 15, 2011

These courses are designed to introduce students to some of the major issues of philosophy and several approaches which philosophers take to deal with them. Questions of value, knowledge, and reality will be included, along with problems that arise in social, political, and religious philosophy. A fundamental aim of the course is to improve one’s ability to think rationally and to make critical judgments.

This course is an introduction to philosophy. We will survey the fundamental areas and problems of philosophy including the following: logic, philosophy of religion, ethics, freedom of the will, personal identity, and philosophy of mind. One main objective will be to learn how to do philosophy by thought experiments. As we go about learning philosophy, we will be scrutinizing some fundamental philosophical texts by such notable thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Sartre.

Required Texts: Theodore Schick, Jr. and Lewis Vaughn, Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments. 4th ed. (New York: McGraw‑Hill, 2010).

Strongly Recommended Texts: Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, MacMillan Publishers; and, Lewis Vaughn, Writing Philosophy: A Students guide to Writing Philosophy Essays, Oxford University Press, 2006

This course will sample several of the great works in the Western philosophical tradition. We will read selections from works by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Mill, Emerson, and Nietzsche. We will end with a recent book by the contemporary philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly. This course will help you begin to develop an understanding of the Western philosophical tradition. You will also develop skill at close reading and constructive engagement with challenging texts through critical writing. By encouraging your thoughtful engagement with the world, the course seeks to help you develop a philosophical habit of mind. Assignments include regular short quizzes, two short papers, and a comprehensive final exam.

Required texts: Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates, Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics; Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy; Mill, Utilitarianism and On Liberty, and Hubert Dreyfus & Sean Kelly, All Things Shining. Other readings will be available on WebCT.

This course covers classical and contemporary issues in philosophy. We will explore questions about the existence of god, the problem of evil, the relationship between the body and mind, the tension between free-will and determinism, the nature of political philosophy, and the making of a good life. Following the Socratic tradition, this course will center around questions and discussion.

Reading material:
1. Introduction to Philosophy Classical and Contemporary Readings Fifth Edition Edited by John Perry, Michael Bratman and John Martin Fischer
2. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy by Thomas Nagel
3. Various authors on webct including Henry David Thoreau and Albert Borgmann.

In one sense, philosophy is thinking hard about life. In this section of Introduction to Philosophy, you'll learn how and be asked to 'do' philosophy. You'll think hard, question, discuss, read, and write about persistent philosophical questions, including questions about life's meaning, death, the existence of God, personhood, emotions, justice, science, art, terrorism, money, and technology. Course requirements: 4-5 hours of reading/writing each week, participation in discussion, brief written in-class reflections, three 4-6 page papers, midterm exam, and final exam.

Required Text: Twenty Questions: An Introduction, 7th Edition (Bowie, Michaels, Solomon, eds.).

This course is designed to introduce students to some of the major issues of philosophy and several approaches that philosophers take to deal with them. Questions of ontology, personal identity, and epistemology will be included. In addition to providing a basic familiarity with the practice of philosophy, a fundamental aim of the course is to improve each student’s ability to think critically and to make rational judgments. In order to achieve this end, students will critically assess philosophical problems in writing assignments and will develop their critical thinking skills during in‑class discussions.

In this course, we will develop our skills of identifying, comprehending, and evaluating arguments. We will learn to distinguish between different modes and forms of argumentation while recognizing whether an argument is valid or invalid, strong or weak. Throughout this course, we will apply these foundational skills to the analysis of texts. The texts which we will be analyzing all involve a central topic: the relationship between politics and education. How do we learn? What is the best way to educate people? Is education (particularly higher ed.) meant for everyone? What is the relationship between education and the political? We will deal with questions such as these in our applied practice of critical thinking.

Required texts: (1) Vaughn, Lewis. "The Power of Critical Thinking." 3rd edition. (2) e‑reserve readings, including selections from Plato, Rousseau, Freire, Kozol, and others.

Grading: (1) Attendance/Participation ‑‑ 20% (includes pop quizzes) (2) Response papers ‑‑ 20% (5% each) (3) Short papers, 2‑3pg. ‑‑ 30% (15% each) (4) Final paper, 5‑7pg. ‑‑ 30%

This course provides an introduction to the skill of reasoning. Students will learn how to recognize, analyze, critique and construct arguments. Specific topics will include how to tell good arguments from bad ones, the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, and learning how to recognize and avoid common mistakes made in reasoning.

Grading: 3 short essays, a midterm, a final exam, and class attendance/participation.

Required Text: The Power of Critical Thinking by Lewis Vaughn (3rd edition).

In this course students learn how to analyze, construct, and critique arguments. The first component of the course is devoted to learning the linguistic concepts and logical tools needed for understanding arguments. Topics considered include language, meaning, truth, logical strength, forms of argument, and strategies for assessing arguments. The second component of the course is devoted to bringing these skills to bear on texts in the philosophy of mind. We will examine the argumentation of Descartes' groundbreaking Meditations on First Philosophy, and then we will turn to more recent debates regarding the nature of consciousness and its relation to the physical world in the work of philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, John Searle, and Thomas Nagel.

Grades: based on two quizzes, three papers, and regular class attendance.

Required texts:
1. Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills, edited by Hughes, Lavery, and Doran (2010, 6th ed.).
2. Course reader, available at the UNM Copy Shop (located in Dane Smith Hall, Room 124).
3. Writing Philosophy: A Student’s Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays, by Lewis Vaughn (2005).

In this section of Reasoning and Critical Thinking, students will learn a method by which they can analyze and assess arguments. Students will be introduced to a number of concepts that are indispensable to the study of reasoning, concepts such as induction, deduction, validity, soundness, inductive strength, and cogency. Over the final seven weeks of the semester, students will study and discuss some arguments found in the work of four important thinkers, namely, Jefferson, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Bentham. This text-based study will provide the oppurtunity to assess these arguments by using the newly acquired method and conceptual tools.

Grades will be based on three papers (50%), a midterm (25%), ten quizzes (10%), and participation/attendance (15%).

Required text: The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning about Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims (3rd edition) by Lewis Vaughn (Oxford University Press, 2010; ISBN 978-0-19-537792-7).

In this course we will explore ancient Greek philosophy. We will begin with the fragmentary writings of the Presocratics. We will cover the thought of Socrates and Plato (dealing with topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics) by reading various dialogues of Plato featuring Socrates as a character. Finally, we will survey Aristotle’s views on cosmology and metaphysics (which, while now largely superseded, were tremendously influential in the history of Western thought) and Aristotle’s ethics and moral psychology (which have never been surpassed). We will also examine Greek thought in a larger context by reading three plays by Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.

Required texts: Cohen, Curd, and Reeve, editors, Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Hackett). Grene and Lattimore, editors, Sophocles I. Suggested supplementary text: Charlotte Higgins, It’s All Greek to Me.