This is a 'big-picture' course, which endeavours to give a sense of the broad intellectual terrain surrounding such fundamental issues as religion, science, morality, political justice, and the nature of the cosmos and humanity's place in it. The aim is to help students to find their bearings in the welter of debates about these subjects that surround us. Among the particular matters arising will be religion and the existence of God, the nature of the mind or soul, artificial intelligence, personal identity, free will and determinism, problems in scientific reasoning, moral relativism, human rights, feminism, gender and sexuality, theories of justice, the nature of science, and the meaning of life. Lectures and tutorials will focus on short readings both classical and contemporary, as well as on film and other media. The course is intended for – though not restricted to – students with no prior exposure to philosophy. Instructors: J. Thorp Instructors: S. Brennan and C. Smeenk Instructor: Morgan Tait An introduction to some of the great thinkers and great ideas which have helped to shape the course of Western civilisation and Western philosophical thought. A broad range of ideas from within the Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysics, Ethics, Existentialism, and the Philosophy of Science will be covered. instructor: Michael Cuffaro Instructor: J. Sullivan An introduction to basic principles of reasoning and critical thinking designed to enhance the student's ability to evaluate various forms of reasoning as found in everyday life as well as in academic disciplines. The course will deal with such topics as inductive and deductive reasoning, the nature and function of definitions, types of fallacies, the use and misuse of statistics, and the rudiments of logic. Primarily for first-year students. Instructor: Aaron Barth This course develops students' ability to approach contemporary philosophical questions by seeing them from various points of view. In doing so, students may challenge and/or refine their own views after respecting a broad range of arguments. A number of questions will be considered including (but not limited to): Do we have a duty to contribute to famine relief? Is euthanasia morally permissible? Do non-human animals have rights? Do persons have a special duty to their parents? Should “hate crimes” have a special legal status? Instructor: Arthur Yates This course develops students' ability to approach disputed questions by seeing them from both sides, so that they reach their own view only after respecting a broad range of argument. Six questions will be considered, including human (over) population, the public funding of art, and the limits of religious freedom. Instructor: D. Proessel Instructor: R. Moir Instructor: E. Doyle Instructor: A. Manafu Instructor: E. Curiel An introduction to several of the main issues in environmental ethics. Sample topics include: the value of nature, the moral status of non-human animals, the possibility of environmentally sustainable economic systems, and the question of how we should respond to the threat of climate change. Instructor: M. Borgida Instructor: G. Barker Instructor: N. Fawcett Instructor: E. Rossiter Instructor: R. MacIntosh Course Outline Instructors: R. Brandt and M. Winsby Instructor: K. Okruhlik Instructor: B. Lawson Instructor: N. McGinnis Instructor: C. Shirreff Ethical analysis of issues arising in contemporary business life. Sample topics: ethical codes in business; fair and unfair competition, advertising and consumer needs and wants; responsibilities to investors, employees and society; conflicts of interest and obligation; business and the regulatory environment. Instructor: D. Proessel Instructor: T. Bieber Instructor: D. Proessel Instructor: S. Hebert Instructor: L. Pelot An investigation of ways that contemporary philosophers deal with concepts of sex, gender and sexuality, addressing such issues as the regulation and production of normative sexuality, the question of essentialism, the construction and disciplining of the gendered body, and the effects of media on gender and sexual identity. Instructor: J. Epp A study of some main problems in legal philosophy. Emphasis is given to actual law, e.g. criminal law and contracts, as a background to questions of law's nature. Specimen topics: police powers in Canada, contractual obligation, insanity defence, judicial reasoning and discretion, civil liberties, legal responsibility, natural law and legal positivism. Instructor: J. Hildebrand Instructor: J. Hildebrand A study of contemporary philosophical discussions of terrorism, including different perspectives on the question of whether terrorism is morally justifiable. Related issues such as just war and civil disobedience will also be touched upon. Instructor: B. Cameron Instructor: R. Middleton Instructor: J. Bell Instructor: E. Curiel A critical examination of key works of Greek philosophers with major emphasis on Plato and Aristotle. Instructor: J. Ponesse A critical examination of key works of selected figures of the 17th and 18th centuries. Instructor: L. Falkenstein A study of sentential and predicate logic designed to train students to use procedures and systems for determining logical properties and relations, and to give students an understanding of the relevant metatheoretical concepts. Instructor: L. Falkenstein Instructor: J. Bell Instructor: R. DiSalle Instructor: K. Okruhlik Instructor: TBA Course Outline (TBA) What are emotions? How many emotions are there? Are there emotions that are universal across cultures? How do emotions differ from beliefs and other mental states and how should we study them? These and other questions will be addressed using a variety of readings ranging from contemporary analytic and feminist philosophy to modern neurobiology, psychology, and linguistics. Instructor: L. Charland Instructor: G. Barker Instructor:TBA Course Outlink Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief and is concerned with questions such as the following: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? How are we to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal to one’s own mind, or external to it? We will discuss answers to some of these questions at an introductory level. In addition, we will discuss in more detail recent arguments regarding the claim that knowledge is “socially constructed.” Instructor: K. Chung Course Outline This course focuses on challenges to subject/object and mind/body dualisms taking into account the relationship between thought, meaning, truth and the ways that the world appears to us. We consider questions such as: How does the world become meaningful to me in my everyday life? What is freedom? To what extent am I responsible for my own life and the life of others? What does it mean to be ethically responsible in a secular society? And finally who is the other and how is otherness shaped by race and sex? Instructor: D. Proessel Instructor: K. Paxman Course Outline (TBA) Instructor: M. Milde Critical study of the nature and justification of ethical and value judgements, with an analysis of key concepts and a survey of the main contemporary theories. Instructor: R. Robb Instructor: L. Kantymir Professionals have special rights and duties that attach to their professional roles. This course will focus on the special ethical obligations that professionals have to themselves, to their clients, to their employers, to third parties, to their professions, and to society at large. Instructor: C. McLeod Instructor: R. Robb This course considers fundamental questions regarding individual and societal obligations in two concurrent ways. First, students will examine classical and contemporary philosophical readings on moral obligations and the application of our moral obligations to practical issues. Second, each student will engage in a community-based learning project that aims to ground consideration of those moral issues in particular contexts. Instructor: R. Robb Instructor: D. Klimchuk Instructor: A. White Instructor: D. Klimchuk This course is an intermediate introduction to the principal ideas of Plato, through a reading of some his most famous dialogues. It will cover some basic themes: the philosophic life, the nature of the soul, the theory of Forms, political theory, epistemology, and foundations of philosophical logic. The syllabus will include the following works: Apology, Phaedo, Crito, Euthyphro, Symposium, Republic (parts), Theaetetus, Sophist. Instructor: J. Thorp Instructor: D. Henry Course Outline Instructor: R. DiSalle Course Outline (TBA) Instructor: B. Hill Course Outline (TBA) This course will provide a detailed investigation of the context, arguments, and significance of Kant’s most famous text in ethics, the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Instructor: C. Dyck Instructor: D. Klimchuk Course Outline (TBA) Instructor: J. Bell Issues and theories in recent philosophy of language. Topics include: the contrast between “meaning as use” and formalist accounts of meaning; reference and descriptions; and skeptical worries about meaning theories. Authors include: Austin, Frege, Grice, Kripke, Quine, Russell, Searle, Strawson and Wittgenstein. Instructor: R. Stainton Instructor: W. Myrvold Course Outline (TBA) Philosophy of biology investigates the conceptual underpinnings of biology and questions concerning the relationship between work in biology and broader philosophical issues about knowledge, ethics, and reality. This course introduces students to philosophical method, and explores philosophical aspects of evolutionary biology, genetics, ecology, evolutionary psychology and ethical issues in biology Instructor: G. Barker Instructor: A. Mendelovici The first third of the course is an introduction to the broad conceptual issues that arise in cognitive science: What is the nature of information? What is the right level of analysis to study the mind? The remaining two thirds of the course looks at current debates in cognitive science. Topics include the modularity of the mind, the innateness of language, the reducibility of consciousness, the aim and accuracy of perception, and the bounds on human rationality. Instructor: C. Viger Instructor: S. Chow Course Outline (TBA) Drawing on the French and German 20th Century tradition of philosophy, this course will focus on philosophy as interrogation, as a way of questioning the world in terms of the ways in which things, people and relations come into appearance. Drawing on texts by Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we will question what it means to act, to dwell, and to encounter others. Instructor: H. Fielding Instructor: A. Bottterell Moral philosophers engaged in normative ethics seek to articulate and justify systems of normative standards—of action or of character—to guide our moral life. This course is an advanced study of normative ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue theories. Instructor: P. Clipsham Instructor: J. Sullivan This series of twelve seminars will study the fragmentary remains of the principal Presocratic Philosophers: the Milesians, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Zeno & Melissus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, and the Sophists (two seminars). These are the thinkers who, in ancient Greek culture, took a new turn in the human intellectual adventure, and were the background to the towering accomplishments of Plato and Aristotle. Instructor: J. Thorp Instructor: J. Miller Course Outline (TBA) Instructor: J. Miller Course Outline (TBA) In this seminar, we will consider the neglected rationalist thinkers of 18th century Germany, including Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius, Knutzen, Lambert, and the pre-Critical Kant. We will begin with a consideration of key Leibnizian texts which outline some of the epistemological and metaphysical claims that would constitute the starting-point for thinkers in this tradition. After Leibniz, we will look at the various debates in the period, including those concerning the proper method for philosophy; the nature of physical substance; the correct system for accounting for the agreement between soul and body; the nature and justification for the principle of sufficient reason and the limits, if any, to its use; and the immateriality of the soul. Instructor: C. Dyck Instructor: C. Dyck The themes of this special topics course are the metaphysical and methodological foundations of theoretical linguistics. It is sub-divided thematically into two parts: what kind of thing theoretical (and especially generative) linguistics is about (i.e., the place of physical, mental and abstract entities therein); and the proper evidence-base for theoretical linguistics. Of interest to undergraduate and graduate students in both the linguistics and philosophy programs, it is important to stress that the course addresses philosophical/foundational topics rather than empirical ones. While familiarity with at least one is essential, the course will not presuppose detailed knowledge of either discipline. Instructor: R. Stainton Instructor: G. Barker Course Outline (TBA) Insructor: A. Mendelovici A study of various systems of modal logic, including alethic, deontic, and tense logic together with an investigation of the challenges and philosophical problems posed by quantified modal logic. Proof theory, trees, and semantics for all these systems. Soundness and completeness proofs. Modal description theory and notation for de re/de dicto distinctions. Classes will be devoted to exercises from James Garson, Modal Logic for Philosophers, (Cambridge: 2006) chs. 1-8 and 12-14, and 17-18. Instructor: L. FalkensteinFall/Winter 2012-2013
2012-2013 Course Brochure
Link to Western's online timetable
1000 Level Courses
Detailed Course Descriptions
1020 - Introduction to Philosophy
1022E - Advanced Introduction to Philosophy
1130F - Big Ideas
1130G - Big Ideas
1200 - Critical Thinking (Section 002)
1200 - Critical Thinking (Distance)
1305F - Questions of the Day
1305G - Questions of the Day
2000 Level Courses
Detailed Course Descriptions
2006 - The Metaphysics & Epistemology of Witchcraft
2020 - Basic Logic
2033A - Introduction to Environmental Philosophy
2032G - Einstein for Everyone
2033B - Introduction to Environmental Philosophy
2035F - Nature, Ecology and the Future
2065F - Evil (Section 001)
2065F - Evil (Section 002)
2065G - Evil
2070E - Ethics and Society
2071E - Biomedical Ethics
2071E - Biomedical Ethics (distance)
2073F - Death (Section 001)
2073F - Death (Section 002)
2074F - Business Ethics (Section 001)
2074F - Business Ethics (Section 002)
2074G - Business Ethics (001)
2074G - Business Ethics (Distance)
2077F - Gender and Sexuality
2077G - Gender and Sexuality
2080 - Philosophy of Law
2080 - Philosophy of Law (Distance course)
2083F - Terrorism
2083G - Terrorism
2091 F Philosophy in Literature
2200 Level Courses
Detailed Course Descriptions
2200F - Ancient Philosophy (Section 001)
2200F - Ancient Philosophy(Section 002)
2202G Early Modern Philosophy (Section 002)
2250 Introduction to Logic
2251F Conceptual Development of Mathematics
2300F - Philosophy of Science
2370F - Science and Values
2400G - Introduction to Philosophy of Mind
2410F Philosophy of Emotion
2500F - Introduction to Theory of Knowledge
2500G - Introduction to Theory of Knowledge
2500G - Introduction to Theory of Knowledge - Distance
2555F - Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
2661F - Philosophy of Religion
2700F - Introduction to Ethics and Value Theory
2700G - Introduction to Ethics and Value Theory
2715G - Health Care Ethics
2720G - The Ethics of Professional Relationships
2730F - Media Ethics
2750G - Ethics in Action
2800F - History of Political Philosophy
2810G - Global Justice and Human Rights
2821F - Philosophy of Law
3000 Level Courses
Detailed Course Descriptions
3003F - Plato
3006G - Aristotle
3012F - Medieval Philosophy
Insructor: H. Lagerlund
3024G - Leibnitz
3031G - Women in Early Modern Philosophy
3170F - Topics in the History of Ethics: Kant’s Groundwork
3180G - Topics in History of Political and Legal Philosophy
3201B - Special Topics in Logical Theory
3260G - Theories of Meaning
3320G - Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
3341G - Philosophy of Biology for Biologists
3410F - Advanced Topics in Philosophy of Mind
3430G - Philosophical Issues in Cognitive Science
3501F - Epistemology
3555G - Continental Philosophy
3601G - Metaphysics
3720F - Normative Ethics
3991F - Philosophy of Neuroscience
4000 Level Courses
Detailed Course Descriptions
4007G Seminar in Ancient Philosophy - Presocratics
4026G/9065 - The Ontological Argument
4027G - Dante Philosophus
4037F - Seminar in Rationalism
4050G - Kant's First Critique
4210F/9727 - Problems in Philosophy of Language
4311G - Modality, Teleology, Normativity, Intentionality
4410F/9661 - Representation
4990A - Modal Logic
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