Philosophy Courses Offered in Fall 2024
The Philosophy Department offers a wide range of courses in line with the diverse areas of specialization of our faculty. Students in many departments will find cognate courses for their majors, including ancient philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of the fine arts, and medical ethics. In addition to regularly offered Miami Plan courses, the department's upper-level courses change in content from semester to semester. Upper-level (undergraduate and graduate) course descriptions for the current and upcoming semesters will be updated on a regular basis.
Descriptions
PHL 205/205H: Science and Culture
MW 11:40am – 1:00pm – Michael Hicks, Ph.D.
How does scientific activity relate to the culture in which it is embedded? In particular, can a broader culture give science whatever respect it deserves, while also engaging with it critically? The issues that motivate these questions include familiar philosophical puzzles about the relationship between science (on the one side) and religion and ethics (on the "other" side); but they become even more pressing when we consider issues around public health, climate change, relations between human and non-human animals, and the consequences of modern technology. To get leverage on these questions, in this course we look at historical, epistemological, ethical, and political discussions of science. If all goes well, students will develop a more nuanced and critical sensitivity to the value of scientific inquiry.
PHL 245: Writing Philosophy
TR 10:05am – 11:25am – Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr., Ph.D.
The primary focus of this course is philosophical writing in various forms: short writing to focus your reading, short writing to develop an independent research question, writing a prospectus that proposes a longer project, writing that develops a thesis on a primary text and situates that thesis within the secondary literature, and writing philosophical pieces for a public audience. Students will engage in extensive drafting, peer review, and revisions of their writing over the course of the semester. The importance of writing for this class is reflected in the final project worth 75% of your grade: an e-portfolio featuring several types of writing on which students have worked over the course of the semester.
Students will be introduced to various methods that will help them to read and write at a deeper level. These methods will culminate in the e-portfolio that will feature specific artifacts that display the types of writing on which the student has worked over the semester. The e-portfolio will also explain the skills involved in each type of writing, so that these skills and what they can be used to do are accessible to a general audience.
PHL 273: Formal Logic
MWF 10:05am – 11:20am – Michael Hicks, Ph.D.
It is tempting to characterize a really good argument this way: if you accept its premise, you must accept its conclusion. This course begins by analyzing this “must”—in what sense can one be logically compelled? What is it for an argument to be valid? A simple trick called “formalization” allows us to focus on certain structural features that are often relevant to the validity of an argument. In this course, we consider two formalizations, sentential logic and a first-order quantification-theory that builds on it, and figure out how to use them to show the validity of arguments. The primary task will be to master these mathematical representations of argument. As such this class is very different from other philosophy classes: homework will often be pseudo-mathematical, and there is very little writing. (Philosophy and Law minor)
PHL 301/301H: Ancient Philosophy
TR 11:40am – 1:30pm – Pascal Massie, Ph.D.
To be concerned with ancient Greek philosophy is to be concerned with philosophy’s beginning. It is commonly acknowledged that philosophy, as it developed in the Western tradition, originated in Greece, about 2,400 years ago. Our task, however, is to move beyond this commonplace in order to think about the problem raised by the ascription of such a beginning. The Greeks themselves understood the beginning as archē. In this sense, a beginning is not a starting point left behind in subsequent developments, nor does it refer to some archaic, primitive, or outdated stage of thought; rather, archē constitutes the living source and guiding principle that endures throughout what has grown out of it. Thus, to study ancient philosophy is to be concerned with what initially and still today motivates philosophy.
The leading question throughout this course will be: ‘what is philosophy?’ In order to articulate it, we will begin with the Pre-Socratic conception of the cosmos and being raised by Parmenides and Heraclitus in particular; then, we will focus on the works of Plato and Aristotle (the main part of the semester) and conclude with a representative text from the Hellenistic period (Epicureanism, Stoicism or Skepticism).
PHL 312: Contemporary Moral Problems
MW 2:50pm – 4:40pm – Clay Alsup, Ph.D.
What personal moral obligations do we have with regard to large-scale social issues? To what extent are interpersonal moral norms applicable to such complex problems? This course will consider a range of such issues, including climate change, racism and integration, the personal debt load crisis, economic inequality, and health care access. We will discuss the historical background of the issues, their impact on our lives, and their moral significance. Finally, we will explore whether our current ethical frameworks are capable of addressing such enormous and pressing concerns.
PHL 335: Philosophy of Law
TR 2:50pm – 4:40pm – Kelly Swope, Ph.D.
This course offers an introduction to Philosophy of Law. We will take an interdisciplinary approach, reading dramatic literature, political philosophy, legal theory, history, and constitutional texts that throw light on our main questions. Some of those questions are: 1. Is civil or even uncivil disobedience permissible when the law does not deliver universal justice? 2. What is the relationship between law and morality? 3. Is judicial review (what the U.S. Supreme Court does) compatible with democratic institutions? This is a great course for Philosophy majors and minors, Philosophy and Law and Pre-law students, humanities and social sciences students, and anyone else who wants to think more deeply about how law shapes human life.
PHL 410P/510P: The Beautiful, the Ugly, and the Sublime
TR 2:50pm – 4:40pm – Elaine Miller, Ph.D.
Beauty, Ugliness, and Sublimity describe experiences that engage our senses, evoking an intellectual, physical, and emotional response. Aesthetics and philosophy of art analyze these experiences as more than purely subjective reactions. What happens when we reflect on how we are moved by aesthetic experiences and attempt to translate our experience into words? Does language fail to capture the richness of experience, or can it augment it? Can the analysis of aesthetic experience produce new concepts, sensations, and emotions, moving aesthetic experience beyond art to potentially affect ethical and political life? In this course, we will encounter philosophers and artists who use different mediums to bring their audiences in touch with underrepresented experiences. Starting with Kant’s “Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment,” we will move on to read texts on political aesthetics from Arendt, Benjamin, Adorno, and Kristeva. We will conclude the course with texts from Black and feminist aesthetics by Wynter, Crawley, and Moten, philosophers who are explicitly concerned with art that can activate social change.
PHL 411/511: Advanced Ethical Theories
MW 5:00pm – 6:50pm – Facundo Alonso, Ph.D.
In this course we will reflect on issues at the intersection of metaethics, philosophy of action, and epistemology. Our main theme is the nature of practical reason. Possible topics include reasons for action; normative judgment; reasons and motivation; deliberation and action; instrumental rationality; the contrast between justification and rationality; the relations between practical reasoning (reasoning that concludes in intention or action) and theoretical reasoning (reasoning that concludes in belief); autonomous agency and personal identity; and others. Our focus will be on classical work as well as on recent debates on such topics. We will examine how different areas of philosophy –such as those mentioned above—approach the question of the nature of practical reason. (This course counts toward the Minor in Philosophy and Law as well as the Minor in Ethics, Society, and Culture.)
PHL 440K/540K: Kant
MW 2:50pm – 4:40pm – Keith Fennen, Ph.D.
It’s hard to overstate Kant’s influence on philosophy. In fact, much of 19th and 20th century philosophy cannot be understood unless it’s viewed against the background of Kant. This course will be a careful study of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. We will aim to understand the problems that Kant seeks to address and how his “transcendental idealism” is supposed to resolve these problems. Topics will include but are not limited to: The nature of space and time, the constitution of experience, the relationship between self-knowledge and knowledge of objects, free will and determinism, the relationship between appearance and reality, and the possibility of metaphysics. Reading the entire Critique in a single semester isn’t easy. We will balance working through the entire book, so that we can see Kant’s unified and complex argument, and an in-depth analysis and discussion of key sections and arguments.
Past Courses
To view courses offered during previous Miami academic terms, visit the Course Bulletin.
