2024-25
PHIL 301
Bioethics
Fall - IN PERSON
Owen Clifton
An investigation of some moral issues arising in connection with health care, including: the relationship between patient and health care provider; reproductive decision-making; euthanasia and the nature of death; and the development of health care policy.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 303
Markets and Morals
Winter - IN PERSON
Jordan Desmond
An examination of the moral principles involved in the evaluation of business institutions, practices and decisions. Sample topics include: liberty, efficiency and the free market ideal; the market and justice in distribution.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above. Exclusion COMM 338.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 311
Philosophy of Psychology
Winter - IN PERSON
David Bakhurst
What is the nature of mind and to what extent can it be disclosed by natural-scientific methods? This course draws on the ideas of a variety of thinkers—such as Bruner, Hacking, McDowell, Midgley, Vygotsky, Wiggins, and Wittgenstein—to explore the nature of psychological explanation. We will examine the social dimensions of the human mind, addressing questions of personhood, identity, rationality, freedom and self-knowledge. We shall also consider how these issues illuminate the psychology of learning, development and education, and explore how the philosophy of psychology can illuminate the phenomenon of autism.
Class format: Lecture and discussion
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite PHIL 250 or 12.0 units in PSYC or permission of the Department.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 314
Creativity
Winter - IN PERSON
Elliot Paul
This course will be concerned with questions such as these: What is creativity? To what extent does being creative require attributes like consciousness, rationality, agency, and skill? Can creativity be explained? Can it be learned? Are generative AI programs creative?
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Scienc
PHIL 316
Philosophy of Art
Winter - IN PERSON
Sofie Vlaad
This is an upper year philosophy course that serves as an introduction to the philosophy of art with a special focus on new and emerging technologies. Has art lost its aura? Do video games have aesthetic value? Can AI-generated images be considered artworks? These questions and more will be explored in this course. We will focus on artforms that make use of emerging technologies such as digital media, video games, and Artificial Intelligence.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 318
Philosophy of Law
Winter - IN PERSON
Christine Sypnowich
This course introduces students to some of the central concepts in the exciting and fascinating field of philosophy of law, or what lawyers call jurisprudence, a subject that straddles the disciplines of law and philosophy and that concerns both the principles and applications of legal ideals. At the heart of the philosophy of law is the question of how the rules of the coercive state might justly intervene in individual freedom. We will consider writings from classic jurisprudence as well as contemporary debates, taken from the UK, the US and Canada. Possible topics include the relation between law and morality, the role of judges, freedom of expression, disobedience, and punishment. These topics will be pursued in order to acquire a grasp of the central ideas and arguments of legal philosophy as well as the skills to analyse and assess them.
The course structure will be lectures, with some opportunity for discussion in class.
Texts/Readings: Readings will be posted onto OnQ.
Assessment: A mixture of in-class essays, a formal essay, and an online quiz.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 329
Early Modern Philosophy
Fall - IN PERSON
Jon Miller
In the early modern period (which goes from roughly 1600-1800), the two great rival schools were the rationalists and the empiricists. This course will focus on the rationalists. The three most important rationalists were Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. To get things started, we will spend two weeks on select topics from Descartes. The rest of the semester will be evenly divided between Spinoza and Leibniz. We will learn about aspects of their epistemologies and metaphysics. By the end of the semester, students who have engaged with the material will have an appreciation of the genius of Spinoza and Leibniz. They will also improve their ability to interpret difficult texts and complicated ideas. Most importantly, they will be in a better position to develop their own thoughts about the philosophical issues that they have encountered.
Texts: TBA
Assessments: TBA
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite PHIL 250 or PHIL 257 or permission of the Department.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 330
Investigations in the History of Philosophy
Fall - IN PERSON
David Bakhurst
For several decades in the 20th Century, Oxford was the centre of the philosophical universe. At that time, there emerged a radical and controversial style of thought known as “ordinary language philosophy”, which held that philosophical problems could be solved, or rather “dissolved”, by careful attention to our everyday forms of thought and talk. This period of British philosophy has recently been the topic of several outstanding and accessible books. In this course, we will read one of them, Nikhil Krishnan’s A Terribly Serious Adventure (2023), together with writings from some of the most talented and ingenious thinkers of the period: Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, A. J. Ayer, R. M. Hare, Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Peter Strawson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Bernard Williams.
Class format: Lecture and discussion
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite PHIL 250 or PHIL 257 or permission of the Department.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 332
Comparative Classical Philosophies
Winter - IN PERSON
Mark Smith
This course offers a comparative study of themes in the ancient philosophical traditions of Greece, China and India, over the period from roughly the 6th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Our reading will range over (among others) Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus; Kong Zi (Confucius), Meng Zi (Mencius), and Xun Zi; the Nyaya-sutra, Kautilya, and Nagarjuna. Themes will include self and no-self, ethics, logic and paradox, mind and embodiment, the state and politics, the good life, and other topics.
Texts/Readings:
- Plato, Five Dialogues
- Aristotle, Introductory Readings
- Nagarjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way
- Hagen & Coutinho, Philosophers of the Warring States
- other readings available electronically via onQ
Assessment: 3 short comparative analyses, 1 midterm paper, 1 final paper
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 343
Social and Political Philosophy
Fall - IN PERSON
Kerah Gordon-Solmon
An examination of some of the principles and theories to which appeal is commonly made when social institutions and practices (and the policies associated with their establishment and maintenance) are subjected to critical scrutiny.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite PHIL 257 or (POLS 250 and 6.0 units in PHIL).
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 348
Freedom of the Will
Fall - IN PERSON
Elliot Paul
This course will be concerned with questions such as these: What is free will? What are the scientific and philosophical challenges to the existence of free will? How might these challenges be answered? What is moral responsibility? In order to be responsible for what you do, must you be able to avoid doing it? What is the difference between the emotions we have toward mere objects and emotions we have toward people who we take to be expressing good will or ill will? What is moral luck?
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Scienc
PHIL 351
Philosophy of Mind
Winter - IN PERSON
Nancy Salay
In this course, we will examine some of the major questions concerning the nature and functioning of the mind, as discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy and phenomenology, by way of a central guiding question: Does the mind function by representing and, if yes, how does it do this? Some of the specific discussions we will investigate include (not necessarily in this order):
- Is cognition a form of computation, that is, are minds computers? Or is that a misguided metaphor?
- Are there mental states? If yes, what sorts of things might these be?
- What are concepts? Are concepts in minds or extended across language-use behaviour?
- What role does language play in mind: is it a consequence or a condition of it?
- What exactly is a mind? Is it a thing having a location? Or is it better thought of as a set of capacities? Is it contained within a brain? Or does it extend across the tools that mind depends upon?
- Do minds (thoughts) cause behaviour? If yes, how?
- What is consciousness? What role does it play in cognition?
Evaluation:
- 3 papers — 60% (1250-1500 words)
- 2 tests (in class) — 20%
- Participation — 20%
Learning Hours: Learning hours may very.
Requirements: Prerequisite PHIL 250 or permission of the Department.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 362
Further Studies in Logic
Fall - IN PERSON
Adele Mercier
From first-order monadic predicate calculus to polyadic predicate calculus with identity. Symbolization, rules of inference, derivation and refutation of arguments. Introduction to modal logics.
Requirements: Prerequisite PHIL 260 or PHIL 361 or ELEC 270.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 367
Jewish Philosophy
Fall - IN PERSON
Eden Elliot
An examination of key Jewish thought from Philo to Fackenheim, exploring such themes as the relationship between philosophy, literature, law, and religion; developments within Jewish philosophy; non-Jewish influences on Jewish thought and vice-versa. Contributions to contemporary philosophical work such as those in bioethics and postmodernism may also be considered.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite (6.0 units in PHIL or JWST) or permission of the Department.
Course Equivalencies: PHIL267, PHIL367
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 374
Continental Philosophy, 1960-Present
Fall - IN PERSON
Paul Fairfield
This lecture course provides an analysis of key figures and texts in continental European philosophy from 1960 to the present. Possible figures include Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Julia Kristeva. Possible topics include hermeneutics, postmodernism, critical theory and feminism.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 378
Philosophy and Intersectionality
Fall - IN PERSON
Dalitso Ruwe
Intersectionality has proven to be a powerful legal theory that has advanced that legal remedies focused on racial discrimination have focused on ameliorating the conditions of Black males while legal remedies focused on sex discrimination have focused on white women, as such Black women given their race and gender are disadvantaged by race and sex legal remedies that do not account for their intersecting identity. Following post-intersectionality critiques that have challenged intersectional readings of Black male as being advantaged in legal remedies, this class will explore the fact that despite the mountainous empirical studies showing that Black males are the most incarcerated, the most unemployed, the least educated, and have the highest rate of homicide in the United States, there is little theory that speaks to the forces that oppress Black males beyond generic theories of racism. In this course, the Black male will be understood as a victim of the genocidal logics of patriarchy rather than its inheritor. This course will: (1) familiarize students with 19th century ethnology, (2) explore the various accounts of the rape of Black men during slavery and Jim Crown by white men and women, (3) the debates between lynching advocates and progressives who advocated castration, (4) utilize empirical findings concerning Black males’ actual gender attitudes and activism concerning sexual violence in the 20th century, and (5) learn the various literatures of social dominance theory which focus on the lethal violence against Black men and boys.
Texts/Readings: Will be provided to you
Assessment: Two short exams each worth 25 percent of the grade and a final research paper worth 50 percent
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
PHIL 382
Space-Time, Matter and Reality
Fall - IN PERSON
Josh Mozersky
Contemporary physics has revolutionized our understanding of space, time, and matter. This has raised many fascinating philosophical issues, such as: Is time real? Is time travel possible? Is reality determinate, or does it depend on human observation? We will examine these and other questions in the context of physical theory.
Learning Hours: 120 (36 Lecture, 84 Private Study)
Requirements: Prerequisite Level 3 or above.
Offering Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Science
2023-24
PHIL 301
Bioethics
FALL – IN PERSON
This course will explore bioethics questions bearing on the beginnings of our lives and creating new lives. Topics will include the ethics of human genetic enhancement, the value of disability, the morality of abortion, and the Nonidentity Problem and its permutations.
Readings :
All readings will be on OnQ
Assessment:
Three essays plus a potential 5% bonus for contributing to peer learning
PHIL 303
Markets and Morals
WINTER – IN PERSON
Businesses and economic systems shape our lives, politics, and society. In fact, there are few aspects of our lives that are unaffected by commerce and economic forces. Because of this, the connections and tensions between ethics and business are an important and complex area of study. This course will examine whether and how corporations, workers, and consumers can behave ethically within these systems. The course will begin by covering the major concepts and theories that shape business ethics. Then, we will spend the rest of the course looking at various issues in business ethics. These topics might include corporate moral agency, privacy in the workplace, responses to sexual harassment, and environmental responsibility.
PHIL 314
Creativity
FALL – IN PERSON
This course will be concerned with questions such as these: What is creativity? Is there a general structure to the creative process? In what sense, if any, does creativity involve freedom or agency? What role, if any, does creativity play in living well, or in moral thought or action? Is there any truth to the popular idea that mental illness is linked to creative genius? Can creativity be measured? Can it be explained? Can it be learned? Can it be taught? Could a computer program be creative?
PHIL 316
Philosophy of Art
FALL – IN PERSON
The course examines key issues in the philosophy of art and philosophical aesthetics, such as: What is art? What are aesthetic concepts and how do we apply them? What counts as a viable theory of art? Can "art" be defined"? Alongside these theoretical questions, we will consider a range of more specific issues such as: the relationship between works of "fine" art, popular art, and public art; questions concerning the aesthetics of the everyday; and the aesthetics of the natural environment.
Students can expect both shorter and longer written assignments including weekly comment sheets and essays. The objective is to develop skills of critical analysis and interpretation.
PHIL 330
Investigations in the History of Philosophy
FALL – IN PERSON
Hermeneutics has served as an important philosophical tradition with a rich corpus that continues to be engaged with today. Understood as the study of interpretation (e.g., of things like texts and art), it remains influential in many areas across the arts and humanities.
In this course, we will study and discuss some key thinkers in the history of philosophical hermeneutics including Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and others with an intent to investigate the problems that the activity of interpretation poses (e.g., does it require a “method” or whether or not interpretation is necessarily "critical"). Along the way, we will attempt to better understand what role hermeneutics played in the development of the Continental philosophical tradition, while delving into some more recent progress made in the scholarship.
PHIL 332
Comparative Classical Philosophies
WINTER – IN PERSON
This course offers a comparative study of themes in the ancient philosophical traditions of Greece, China and India, over the period from roughly the 6th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. Our reading will range over Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus; Kongzi (Confucius), Mengzi (Mencius), and Xunzi; the Dhammapada, Kautilya, and Nagarjuna. Themes will include self and no-self, ethics, logic and paradox, mind and embodiment, and other topics.
Assessment:
3 short comparative analyses, 1 midterm paper, 1 final paper
PHIL 343
Social and Political Philosophy
FALL – IN PERSON
Deciding whether a state like Canada or the U.S. is legitimate seems to be one of the most fundamental judgments we can make about its moral standing. As both critics and supporters of particular states frequently assume, legitimate states have a right to govern their citizens, while illegitimate states lack this right. But what exactly does it mean for a state to have the right to govern, and what are the ethical implications when an unjust state loses this right? The aim of this course is to explore these questions by engaging with contemporary philosophical work on state legitimacy and resistance to injustice. Topics covered will include: The moral foundations of legitimate political authority; The political obligations of citizens in modern states; anarchist objections to political rule; The justification of civil disobedience; and the ethics of political violence, revolution, and foreign intervention.
Course assessments will include 1-2 short writing assignments, a midterm test, and a final essay.
PHIL 347
Contemporary Moral Philosophy
FALL – IN PERSON
This course familiarizes students with some of contemporary moral philosophy’s most central questions and ideas, specifically by way of examination of a topical issue that, according to John Rawls, “subjects any ethical theory to severe if not impossible tests”: what we owe future generations. Questions to be addressed include: Can we harm or benefit a person by bringing her into existence? Is it wrong to create a person whose life is well worth living, when the alternative is creating a different person whose life would go even better? Should we care more about what happens over the course of the long-term future than about what happens in the present, just because the long-term future is likely to contain very many more people? Would it be wrong to hasten human extinction? What should we do about climate change?
PHIL 348
Freedom of the Will
WINTER – IN PERSON
What is freedom? Is being free compatible with being determined by prior causes? What is the relationship, if any, between other human attributes like rationality and consciousness? We’ll explore these questions primarily with readings from contemporary philosophy, supplemented by some relevant sources from the history of philosophy as well as recent research in cognitive science.
PHIL 351
Philosophy of Mind
WINTER – IN PERSON
This course will explore various philosophical issues concerning the nature of the mind. We will address such questions as: is the mind fundamentally different from the body? Can you determine if other people have minds? Is the mind identical to the brain? Is it possible to design a mind (AI)? What role has evolution by natural selection played in the kinds of minds we have? How does the mind relate to the world? Do other animals have minds? Is the mind only 'in the head'? Or is 'mind' ultimately a scientifically inadequate term that we should abandon in favor of whatever our best neuroscience tells us?
PHIL 352
Metaphysics
FALL – IN PERSON
The special focus of this term’s material will be on the metaphysics of the human person. Does the concept “person” pick out a natural kind having a distinctive essence? Or does it just pick out a specific sort of animal? Is there such a thing as the self, which accounts for enduring personal identity, or is the self an illusion? Is there such a phenomenon as free will, or is that perhaps an illusion also? These and other metaphysical questions that have specifically to do with human life and our self-conception will be broached, largely through contemporary work in metaphysics. Among others, we will read work by Sally Haslanger, Christine Korsgaard, Paul Snowdon, Galen Strawson, and Harry Frankfurt.
Assessment:
3 short argument analyses, 1 midterm paper, 1 final paper
PHIL 362
Further Studies in Logic
FALL – IN PERSON
This course is the sequel to PHIL 260, designed to finish the thorough grounding in first-order predicate logic begun there. This class will cover what is called polyadic predicate calculus with identity, and will distinguish predicates from various operations. Don’t let the math-sounding vocabulary intimidate you.
PHIL 260 and 362 together constitute the minimal logic requirement for any self-respecting philosophy student in most philosophy departments in most countries today.
PHIL 367
Jewish Philosophy
WINTER – IN PERSON
An historical survey of key figures in Jewish thought in classical, medieval, modern, and postmodern eras. Major authors include Philo of Alexandria, Maimonides, Spinoza, Arendt, and Levinas. Topics include Jewish belief and Greco-Roman Stoicism, Jewish thought in the medieval Islamic world, the influence of Jewish philosophers on early modern European philosophy, and writing on ethical, political, and social philosophy in the twentieth century.
PHIL 373
Continental Philosophy, 1900-1960
FALL – IN PERSON
This lecture course provides an analysis of key figures and texts in continental European philosophy between 1900 and 1960. Possible figures include Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Hannah Arendt, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Possible topics include phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics.
PHIL 374
Continental Philosophy, 1960-Present
WINTER – IN PERSON
This lecture course provides an analysis of a few texts in continental European philosophy between 1960 and today. We shall study one book each by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, and Jeff Mitscherling and Paul Fairfield. Major topics will include phenomenology, hermeneutics, poststructuralism, aesthetics and artistic creation, among others. The format will be lecture with discussion.
PHIL 382
Space-Time, Matter & Reality
WNTER – IN PERSON
The development of modern physics has greatly altered our understanding of the universe we inhabit. In so doing, it has a direct impact on many long-standing philosophical issues, such as: the relationship between the observer and the observed; the nature of space, time, and matter; the nature of properties; the possibility of gaining knowledge of the mind-independent world; the nature of abstract objects; the mind-body relationship; the possibility of time travel; and more.
This course is a detailed, cross-disciplinary examination the implications of physics for these and related philosophical concerns. Questions to be addressed include: Is time real? Is the passage of time an illusion? Is time directed? What is the nature of infinity? Is the structure of space-time objective or merely a convention? Does physics reveal a mind-independent reality or do observers in some way construct reality? Is it possible to provide a complete description of reality?
While a willingness to learn some (very elementary) formal techniques is important for this course, it does not presuppose any background in math or science, just a willingness to learn. Science and math students are, of course, warmly invited.
PHIL 384
Consciousness
WINTER – IN PERSON
In these early years of the 21st-Century, consciousness has become the final frontier for science, but not so long ago 'mind talk' was strictly taboo in the sciences and the subject was thought to be anathema to academic study. Times have changed: 60 years of advances in brain recording technology, increased cooperation between cognitive scientists of different sub-disciplines, and easier access to the resulting work has led to a field of consciousness studies.
That said, consciousness is still a very hard problem, the hard problem, perhaps, and we deepen our understanding of it by integrating our new findings with insights we have already gained. In this course we will do just that by exploring, through theory and practise, some of the most important philosophies of consciousness and their connections to recent scientific consciousness research. Some of the perspectives we will be looking more closely at are Buddhism, Phenomenology, and Embodied Cognitive Science.
PHIL 390
Philosophical Practice
FALL/WINTER – IN PERSON
Note: Application Required
This is a skills course intended especially for students considering graduate study in philosophy. The fall term provides intensive training in philosophical writing. Its topic is always one of the department's core areas: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy or history. The winter term is a practicum: students will serve as writing tutors for the PHIL 111.
Here are some innocuous claims. Some states of affairs are better than others, in virtue of being better for persons than others. (For example, states of affairs in which we suffer less are better, other things equal, than those in which we suffer more.) We have presumptive moral reason to help bring about better states of affairs, which will sometimes be decisive. But we also have prerogatives to favour our own interests, sometimes at the expense of what is impartially best. Third, and lastly, we are subject to moral constraints, which limit what we can do in pursuit of our own, or others’, good. Again, none these claims is terribly controversial. Nevertheless, taken together, they give rise to various puzzles, and even paradoxes. Our task will be to work through some of these (in particular, their treatments in the contemporary literature), and toward a better understanding of duties, constraints, prerogatives, and permissions.
Texts/Readings: All readings will be available on OnQ.
Assessment/Fall term: Written argument reconstructions (2 total); argument reconstruction rewrites, supplemented with critiques (2 total); final essay; participation; presentation
Assessment/Winter Term: Practicum performance. Note that we will not meet weekly during the winter term; practicum hours and occasional class meetings will be scheduled around students’ other academic commitments.
Note: This course is capped at 15 students. Admission is by application: a letter of interest, a letter of recommendation from a Philosophy faculty member, and an informal transcript. Normally, successful applicants will (i) be registered in a Philosophy Major or Medial Plan and (ii) have a GPA of at least 3.0 in each of PHIL 250 and PHIL 257. Please e-mail your letter of application and informal transcript to Professor Gordon-Solmon (kg59@queensu.ca); ask your reference to do the same with their letter.
Applications received by August 10, 2022 are guaranteed consideration. After that date, applications will be considered on a rolling basis until the class is full.