Catalog - Course Descriptions

This course enables the student to explore the love of wisdom as reflected in philosophical language, distinctions, and concepts; examines major historical, contemporary thinkers, issues and traditions of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, value-theory, ethics, and aestetics); discusses relevant issues, and shows connections, roots and influences of contemporary philosophy.

Learn the distinction between logic and rhetoric, the distinction between deductive and inductive arguments, the analysis of ambiguities, and the nature of common fallacies in reasoning. Through the works of great philosophers, you will develop a system of symbolic logic, probabilistic reasoning, and evaluation of deductive arguments. You will look at extensions of classical logic (such as modallogic, epistemic and deontic logics, and multi-valued logic) as well as discuss some fundamental issues about the nature of reasoning and logic more generally. You will develop skills in analysis and evaluation of reasoning in everyday situations while improving insights into argument construction and exact methods of proof.

This course takes up the central problems of thinking rationally about moral questions and critically examines the best-known efforts by philosophers to deal with problems. Issues to be explored include ethical relativism, diversity of moral rules, and determinism.