PHIL 100 SYLLABUS

PHILOSOPHY 100 SYLLABUS FALL 2009

HL 209, 211

WF  11:30 - 12:50 HOL 209

            1:00 - 2:20    HOL 211

INSTRUCTOR: KEVIN O'NEILL, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY

OFFICE:  BEKINS 101 JOHNSTON CENTER

748-8655

CELL: 3238415171

EMAIL kevin_oneill@fastmail.fm

OFFICE HOURS: Monday 12 - 2

Friday 2:30 - 4:00

Alternate Tuesdays 1 - 3

COURSE DESCRIPTION

 We all believe in things that we cannot in a strict sense see. Most of us believe in God or a higher power or a guiding force. We believe in karma, destiny, and fate. We believe in justice and love and kindness. We believe that every human being has a unique identity somewhere "inside", hidden from the world. We believe there are unseen forces in history, in biology, in the physical world. And so forth. Some of us even believe that the dead speak and walk.

This class investigates our beliefs in what we cannot see directly but believe in nonetheless. It also investigates the difference between what we can see and what we cannot, and looks into the rules we use to tell whether something is or is not real.

These are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been pondering for a long time and that occur to people every day. The key difference between regular people and philosophers is that we philosophers are a little obsessive about such issues. We love to ask questions, top probe, to push. We are rarely satisfied with consoling or plausible or "grown-up" answers. We pause and mess around with what most people think are obvious answers and settled truths.

By entering this class you are entering the world of philosophers in general and my world in particular.  I love to ask questions, all day, every day. I am skeptical, restless, and impatient, on edge. The people you will read are not all as aggravating but all have this in common: they are not easily satisfied with stock answers.

When the class is done I cannot predict anything about what you will bring away with you. But I do know that some of you will learn to be a little more skeptical, a little less willing to take things as they are given, and in the long run that might be a good thing, especially in a political system and culture in which we claim to value responsible choice.

EVALUATION

You will write FOUR short papers in response to particular questions or materials that I will give you. There will also be a take-home final and a Manifesto, of which more later.

Essays will be from 3 -7 pages in length, depending on the topic. Be prepared to write about religious belief, personal identity, truth, freedom, beauty and other such vast topics.

You will all be offered the option of rewriting any essay once.

You will be judged on how well you state your position, how carefully you offer arguments to defend that position and how ell you respond to objections to your position. Philosophy has a lot to do with making arguments - that is, saying, "I believe X" and then giving reasons for the belief and also reasons why you reject alternative beliefs.

We will go over all this in class many, many times; my purpose is to teach you how better to stake out as claim on truth and defend that claim in appropriate ways. Note that this does not mean that I thin that every belief one has needs to be defended on purely factual and rational grounds. Sometimes we need to make acts of faith and sometimes those acts have to be a little bit blind. The secret is to figure out when such faith is justified and when it is not.

You will be evaluated overall -- that is each essay will count, as will the final and the Manifesto, but we can negotiate relative weights for all assignments. Speaking roughly, each essay will count for 20 points; the final will count for 10 and the Manifesto for another 10.

Class attendance is of course a given. Learning is a collaborative effort. You attend University voluntarily and I must assume that you are in class because that is your choice. Therefore since we are in the class together, and by choice, you should show up just as I should show up and if either of us needs to miss a session (which should happen very infrequently for either of us), I will let you know beforehand and will expect you to let me know beforehand as well. Not letting you know would be discourteous and unprofessional. And each time I miss -- or you miss-- we have to come up with some way to compensate for the absence.

BOOK:

We will read selections from the 2007 edition of John Cottingham's Western Philosophy. If you need to you can get away with earlier editions, namely the one from 1996. Make sure, however, that the Part and Section numbers assigned below, which are based on the 2007 edition, sync with the numbers in your edition. If you have older edition please come up after class and we can coordinate assignments very quickly.

CALENDAR

SEPTEMBER

9 INTRODUCTION. READ PART VI, NUMBER 9 PP. 382-387 (THIS AND ALL LATER REFERENCES ARE TO COTTINGHAM'S 2007 EDITION OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY).

11 DISCUSS JAMES AND WILL TO BELIEVE. READ PART VI, NUMBER 6, THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. PP. 365 -370.

16 DISCUSS ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. READ PART VI, SECTION 2, PP. 348 -350 AND SECTION 1, PP. 345-347.

18 DISCUSS CLASSIC GOD PROOFS. READ PART VI, SECTION 12, 399 - 405.

23 DISCUSS RELIGION AND EVIDENCE.  READ PART VI, SECTION 8, 376 - 381

25 DISCUSS SUBJECTIVITY AND FAITH.

30 DISCUSS RELIGIOUS FAITH AND GOD

OCTOBER

2 RELIGIOUS BELIEF ESSAY DUE. POSSIBLE IN-CLASS DEBATE ON GOD.  READ PART V, SECTION 4,             290 - 295.

 7 IDENTITY, MIND AND BODY. DISCUSS FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS. READ PART IV, SECTIONS 1 AND 2, 201 - 213.

9 DISCUSS THE SOUL. READ PART IV, SECTION 4, 221-226.

14 DISCUSS THE ISOLATED CONSCIOUSNESS. READ PART V, SECTION 10, 320 - 325.

16 DISCUSS EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM. READ PART IV, SECTION 10, 251 - 255.

21 DISCUSS FREEDOM. READ PART IV, SECTION 12, 263 - 267.

23 DISCUSS IDENTITY AND FREEDOM.

28 FREEDOM/ IDENTITY ESSAY DUE.

30 MEANING AND LIFE BEGIN DISCUSSION OF PLATO'S CAVE, PART II, SECTION 1, 67 - 68 AND PART I, SECTION 1, 3 - 9.

NOVEMBER

4 DISCUSS CAVE AND INNATE IDEAS. READ PART XII, SECTION 6, 782 -786, AND SECTION 7, 786 - 789.

6 DISCUSS LIFE AS MEANINGLESS. READ PART XII, SECTIONS 8 AND 9, 790 - 799.

11 DISCUSSION EXISTENTIAL DEFIANCE. READ PART XII, SECTION 11, 809 -814 AND PART XII, SECTIONS 1 AND 2, 765 - 770.

13 DISCUSS BELIEF AND STOICISM. READ PART V, SECTION 6, 302 - 306. SET UP DISCUSSION OF MEANING.

18 DISCUSS MEANING.

20 MEANING ESSAY DUE.

25 T-GIVING

27 T-GIVING

DECEMBER

2 THE VALUE OF ART - IN THESE LAST CLASSES WE WILL DISCUSS THE IMPORTANCE OF ART -- MUSIC, FILM, VIRAL VIDEO AND SO FORTH, READINGS WILL BE SELECTED AT THIS TIME.

4

9

11 ART ESSAY DISCUSSED.

15 ART ESSAY DUE.